Is there a flash player for iPhone?

To put it simply, no.
As to whether their making one, they SAY they are, but I doubt it.

There’s no flash player for the iPhone.

Announced today; it is in development.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120588767706747197.html?mod=rss_whats_news_technology&apl=y&r=60672

However I have seen movies played on the iPhone with a flash player. But I can’t think what site that was sorry.

There is not an iteration of the Flash player available for the iPhone, and it is unlikely that Apple will allow Adobe to create a MobileSafari plugin to accommodate for one. Not only are Apple keen to make headway with Quicktime as the defacto standard for mobile video and media, but you have to consider how a Flash player for the iPhone would work.

It seems simple enough on the face of it, but you start to get into the following details:

- Many video players are nowhere near the iPhone screen size. You would be watching videos in a tiny format, unable to use the controls.

- Unlike Quicktime, instances of the Flash player would have their own controls. There would be no standard way of watching Flash video.

- How do Flash applications such as games accept keyboard input? When do you have the keyboard available? You cannot present it all the time, as it consumes almost 50% of the screen real-estate, but at the same time giving users the option to show or hide the keyboard would be an additional step and make such a feature useless.

- How do you drag inside a Flash application? Dragging with your finger moves the view on the page in Safari, if dragging suddenly effects something else the result will be confusing. In order to accept drag input at all, Safari would have to allow any and all dragging where a Flash movie gets in the way to be directed at a Flash movie. So for example, a Flash advertisement would cause dragging issues.

- Flash movies are large. Loading a single Flash advertisement would delay the loading of the rest of the page.

- Flash processing requires a massive power input. Flash advertisements and other unwanted media could consume battery life when unneeded.

In short: Flash is designed for a large display with a mouse, and the iPhone is the opposite of this platform. Not in the least to say the Adobe’s efforts violate the iPhone SDK terms, and they will not be allowed to publish their application without a special grant from Apple. It is likely that their announcement today was a PR stunt to put pressure on Apple to accept such a proposal.

In my opinion, Apple shifting on this issue is unlikely, and we will never see a Flash player for the iPhone (and certainly not one integrated with Safari).

wow thats alot of copy and paste or alot of writing. I did not even read any of it. it wont fit on my iphone.

@glial: Adobe backpedalled today, probably because someone explained to them that Apple’s requirements for apps to be hosted in the app store do not allow interpreters (thus, there won’t be Java on the iPhone either) and that the only way to get third-party applications onto the iPhone is through the app store.