In its “Strong mobile adoption of Flash Player” press release, Adobe said that the new release of Flash Player with performance advancements will be available for computers and also for Android Honeycomb tablets and BlackBerry Tablet OS (PlayBook). The main new thing of version 10.2 is called Stage Video, which delivers much improved video performance through optimizing hardware acceleration on mobile devices. It is said that Stage Video decreases processor and memory usage while “enabling higher frame rates and improved video quality,” with test results showing up to 80% CPU savings when playing back video in 1080p on Windows and Mac OS. I guess we should expect similarly impressive figures for tablets, as well.
Aside from that, Adobe also talked about the wide industry acceptance of Flash and AIR. According to the company, Adobe AIR apps can sing along more than 84 million smartphones and tablets running Android and iOS. By the end of this year, Adobe expects more than 200 million smartphones and tablets to support Adobe AIR applications.
In addition, they said that more than 20 million smartphones were shipped or upgraded with Adobe Flash Player 10.1 software on over 35 certified devices in the first six months following the launch. For 2011, the company expects Flash Player to be supported on more than 132 million units worldwide, with over 50 tablets expected to support Adobe’s technology.