MWC 2010: Adobe reveals AIR for smartphones

Adobe is bringing AIR to a wider range of mobile devices

Adobe has unveiled its AIR platform for smartphones at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, building on the company's coming Flash player support for mobiles. At the same time the firm said it was joining the Limo Foundation in order to extend Flash to more handsets.

AIR, which stands for Adobe Integrated Runtime, is a cross-platform environment using Flash and web technologies, but which lets developers build applications to run outside a browser. It currently supports Windows, OS X and Linux.

With the imminent availability of Flash Player 10.1 on handsets, Adobe is now bringing AIR to mobile devices with support expected on Google's Android, Symbian OS, Palm's WebOS, Windows Mobile, and RIM's BlackBerry platforms.

Android will be the first platform to get AIR, and Adobe said it would demonstrate it on this platform during MWC.

"We're going to demo some capabilities on Motorola's Android handsets first, and we're excited that RIM has also said it will support AIR," said Anup Murarka, Adobe's director of technology strategy for the Flash Platform.

"We will want to extend it to others, such as Symbian, but we can't do everything at once. We need partner support to get it all done," he explained.

Murarka also said that Adobe will preview new mobile development tools, including an updated Device Central in its Creative Suite that has support for Flash 10.1 and improved mobile HTML emulation so that developers can see what their app will look like on the target mobile device.

"We're also extending the emulator to support phones with accelerometers and touch-screens," Murarka said.

Adobe said that it is joining the Limo Foundation, which develops an open Linux-based phone platform, in order to bring its Flash technology to Limo handsets.

"This will allow an even larger number of devices to support Flash," said Murarka.

Limo members include LG, Orange, Vodafone, Panasonic, Samsung and Motorola, the last of which uses the software in some of its Rokr handsets.