One of the long touted abilities of Android was its support of Flash within the unnamed web browser that was bundled with the operating system. This seemed to be a key selling point in contrast to iOS devices which have steadfastly refused to support it over the years. However, the haven provided by Android now seems to be under threat.
While Chrome on Android looks like it could soon become the bundled and default browser on Android its lack of support for Flash was somewhat telling. Having only just come out of beta in the last few days it had yet to support Flash which was a move that confused many given the unnamed browsers capability to support Flash as a plugin. You could be forgiven for thinking that Flash isn’t a huge priority on Android.
Well, it seems that Adobe is withdrawing Flash for Android on August 15th, 2012 with Android 4.1 (Jellybean) being the first version of the mobile operating system without a certified version of Flash available. For pre-Jellybean devices with Flash still installed updates will still come through but if you wipe your device then you won’t be able to reinstall Flash via the Google Play store.
I guess this is a sign that Flash is in its twilight or at least heading that way.
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