Adobe, Motorola bring Flash Player to Android

US vendor Motorola is set to beef up the arsenal available to its Android-based devices by bringing Adobe’s Flash Player to the platform.

Working in conjunction with Adobe, as part of the Open Screen Project, Motorola is helping to develop Flash Player 10.1 so it works on Android. Integration of Flash browser extensions in Motorola’s Android devices is expected in the first half of 2010.

Motorola said it will be deploying the full Flash Player broadly across its Android product portfolio going forward and will also release Flash Player updates for existing devices such as the Droid once Adobe releases the software.

Flash is increasingly seen as an essential part of the web experience, and Flash Player 10.1 has been designed to work on smartphones, smartbooks and netbooks as well as PCs and other internet-connected devices to extend this experience. Yet its absence has been a persistent blight on the iPhone’s spec sheet.

The closest the iPhone will get to Flash is as a native application rather than the in-browser player. Developers will be able to use Flash Professional CS5 to export applications for the iPhone, but this only means they can create standalone applications that can be downloaded from the App Store and not incorporate Flash into websites for display in the iPhone’s Safari browser.

In other news, Motorola has announced another device in its Android lineup in the shape of the Backflip, which will be available in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia during the first quarter.

Trying hard to differentiate itself, Motorola has given the Backflip a “reverse clamshell design,” which means opening the phone up reveals a hard QWERTY keyboard with a trackpad on the back side, so users can navigate around the touchscreen without getting their fingers in the way.

Once again, Motorola has skinned the OS in its own style with the interface known as MotoBlur that focuses on social networking and streams all contacts, posts, messages and photos from sources such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Gmail in once place on the home screen.