Palm has had the Flash plug-in since webOS was updated to version 1.4 way back in February. Since then, there’s been almost no news on the progress of actually getting it built into the OS. That has Palm announcing today that they don’t know what’s taking Adobe so long in porting Flash 10.1 Player integrated into webOS.
From what we’ve seen, Mobile Flash can either work like a champ, or just slow your browsing experience to a crawl. Since Flash 10.1 Player is still in beta, this will surely improve, and it’s still very nice to have. Unfortunately, it seems like Adobe is solely focused on Android at the moment, which makes sense for a platform that has so much more momentum than webOS ever had. But, that’s not sitting well with Palm. The webOS maker recently came out and announce that they “don’t know what the hold-up is” when it comes to getting Flash on webOS.
Although HP could be one of the reasons that Palm is seeing such delays, HP could really be the saving grace of the company. Palm will continue as planned to release new hardware, and it may indeed be very good, but many people may feel a little burned with the lack of applications, and features that some OS’s have been sporting for sometime now. In my honest opinion, I don’t think we’ll see much hype from Palm until HP comes out with a WebOS tablet. The card-like WebOS UI would just look absolutely stunning on a 7 to 10 inch tablet device. Only then will I believe that Palm has what it takes to get back into the game.
Flash will indeed be coming to the WebOS at some point, but exactly when that will happen is obviously the question. At this point, who is really to blame for the delay is anyone’s guess. Adobe hasn’t commented on the state of Flash on the platform, so for right now, we can start there. In that time, let’s hope Palm will deliver a WebOS device with a bigger screen that will actually make Flash an enjoyable experience… at some point.
[Via: Electronista]