Adobe has ceased development of its tools to export Flash content into a format suitable for the iPhone.

“We will still be shipping the ability to target the iPhone and iPad in Flash CS5,” said Adobe’s Mike Chambers. “However, we are not currently planning any additional investments in that feature.”

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has previously slammed Adobe as “lazy” and Flash as unsuitable for use on mobile devices. Apple has not enabled Flash playback on the iPhone, pushing the open HTML 5 standard instead.

Adobe’s announced cessation of development follows Apple’s decision to change the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, banning use of non-Apple tools to create iPhone, iPad or iPad touch apps.

Section 3.3.1 reads:

“Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).”

“This has the effect of restricting applications built with a number of technologies, including Unity, Titanium, MonoTouch, and Flash CS5,” Chambers said.

“It is our belief that Apple will enforce those terms as they apply to content created with Flash CS5. Developers should be prepared for Apple to remove existing content and applications (100+ on the store today) created with Flash CS5 from the iTunes store,” he warned.

Adobe will now focus its Flash for mobile efforts on Google’s Android and other smartphone platforms.

Via: Mike Chambers Blog