Adobe launches Flash Player 10.1

Adobe has released Flash Player 10.1, which will bring full Flash support to mobile devices.

The long awaited launch will be incorporated into handsets using operating systems such as Android, Windows Phone 7, Symbian, Blackberry and WebOS and is expected to be made available via over-the-air downloads and to be pre-installed on smart phones, tablets and other devices in the coming months. It won't of course be included in Apple products.

Consumers will also have to wait until operating system providers update their programs before they can benefit from any of the new features.

Adobe said that the first people to see this will probably be users with devices supporting Android 2.2 “Froyo.” These are expected to include the Dell Streak, Google Nexus One, HTC Evo, HTC Desire, HTC Incredible, DROID by Motorola, Motorola Milestone and the Samsung Galaxy S.

According to the company the new program will allow mobile users to experience "millions of sites" with rich applications and content inside the browser including games, animations, rich internet applications (RIAs), data presentations and visualisations, ecommerce, music, video and audio.

It has been redesigned and optimised for mobile devices, with new input options to cater for handheld users, while support for accelerometer allows users to view Flash content in landscape and portrait modes.

The company also claims the new version improves power efficiency by using “Smart Rendering” that prevents Flash content from running when it is not actually visible on the screen. Smart Zooming also allows users to scale content to full screen mode and the memory reduction feature decreases content usage of RAM by up to 50 percent. Flash Player will  pause automatically when events occur such as incoming phone calls or switching from the browser to other device functions. Once users switch back to the browser, Flash Player resumes where it paused.

David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president, Platform Business at Adobe, said:"The combined power of the leading rich media technology platform with millions of passionate creatives is sure to impact the world in ways we haven’t even imagined yet.”