Adobe Bringing Flash Support to iOS Devices Indirectly Through Live Streaming

Flash support on iOS is a topic which ignited many hot discussions in the past. Apart from the arguments from the users that there indeed should be support for the flash on the iDevices, Apple is still firm on it’s decision to not bring natively flash to the iOS. No matter if it is because of the inherent security risks associated with the flash, performance  or some other secret reason that only Apple knows – the fact of the matter is millions of users are still left in the cold without a multimedia technology which is so extensively being used in almost every other website you visit on the Internet. For sure, you have some options and clever hacks if you have a jailbroken iDevice. But for most users there is not much left in terms of alternatives. One option could be to use the Skyfire 3.0 to view flash video content as we reported before.

True flash support with all the features is something that we might not see in the iDevices anytime soon, but it seems Adobe is taking some initiative to bridge the gap by bringing a technology called HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) to the platform, it will allow to enable the playback of the flash video streaming content on the iOS based devices. HLS basically uses the MPEG2 stream to achieve it’s magic. Adobe demonstrated HLS last week on the NAB. As you know flash is also being used extensively for creating flash games, however current HLS will only be useful for the video streaming content unfortunately.