Adobe Kills Flash for Mobile

ZDNet had a pretty nice scoop last night on Adobe’s plans to cease development of Flash for mobile devices. Instead, Adobe will be refocusing their efforts on Flash.

Today, a lot of folks are saying that Steve won. However, I think Chairman Gruber nails it:

Apple didn’t win. Everybody won. Flash hasn’t been superseded in mobile by any sort of Apple technology. It’s been superseded by truly open web technologies. Dumping Flash will make Android better, it will make BlackBerrys better, it will make the entire web better. iOS users have been benefitting from this ever since day one, in June 2007.

This is big news — and good news — for mobile computing. There’s been a recent trend in web design dubbed “Mobile First”. Thinking of how Flash’s roots have been in web design, I can’t help but hope that Adobe has seen the usefulness of Flash declining and is taking a “Mobile First” strategy to dismantling Flash’s death grip on the web.