Adobe Flash & AIR Betas For Android Open

Adobe have been taunting us with Flash Player and Adobe AIR for Android in various pre-release alphas – we even found one lurking, unadvertised, in the halls of Mobile World Congress back in February – for months now, so it's exciting to finally hear that the two technologies are finally hitting beta stage.  For the moment, though, it's a private beta and Adobe are obviously being cautious about how many people they invite in; there are separate sign-up forms for AIR and for Flash.

Unfortunately that means there's no public timescale for when developers might actually get their hands on one or both of the technologies, which could put a dampener on coding enthusiasm.  We can't help but think this is short-sighted of Adobe, who are facing significant, ongoing criticism with regards the absence of Flash support on the iPad.

While that omission isn't down to Adobe's choice in the matter, it has had the knock-on effect of prompting digital content providers to look to more Apple-friendly technologies such as HTML5.  Adobe have been promoting a hybrid HTML5/Flash combination in recent months, but of course adoption of that depends on whether devices actually support both systems.