According to a blog entry by Mike Chambers, Adobe Product Manager for the Flash platform, Adobe will not do any further development into Flash CS5 capabilities to port content over to the Apple iPhone and iPad. Current capabilities will remain but will simply not be extended.
Apple and Adobe have had a difficult relationship as of late. It appears that Apple’s new iPhone developer program license (restricting code to Objective-C, C, C++, and JavaScript) was the last straw.
The primary goal of Flash has always been to enable cross browser, platform and device development. The cool web game that you build can easily be targeted and deployed to multiple platforms and devices. However, this is the exact opposite of what Apple wants. They want to tie developers down to their platform, and restrict their options to make it difficult for developers to target other platforms.
Adobe will shift its attention to other devices and operating systems. For example, both Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0 are headed to Google Android.
Chambers concludes with a prediction that “open platforms will win out over the type of closed, locked down platform that Apple is trying to create.”