Adobe Warns Of Risk From Lack Of Flash Support In iPad/iPhone

Adobe on Friday filed a new Form 10-Q with the SEC in which the company listed as a risk factor potential difficulties from Apple or others who persuade customers to use non-Adobe technologies.

"To the extent new releases of operating systems or other third-party products, platforms or devices, such as the Apple iPhone or iPad, make it more difficult for our products to perform, and our customers are persuaded to use alternative technologies, our business could be harmed," Adobe said in the filing.

Adobe, headquartered in San Jose, Calif., is clearly concerned about the extent to which Apple appears unwilling to budge on building Flash support into its next-generation devices. Friday's SEC filing came a day after it was reported that Apple is actively working to keep Flash apps from running on the iPhone.

Apple's growing sales of iPad and iPhone devices could eventually give them a significant share of the market for devices which consumers use to access the Internet. That could start to negatively impact the number of software developers who include compatibility with Adobe technology in their applications, Adobe warned.

In the iPhone 4.0 SDK beta unveiled Thursday, Apple changed the terms of its iPhone Developer Program license agreement to prohibit cross-compilers, which allow developers to write iPhone apps using languages other than Apple's Objective-C.

Apple and its CEO Steve Jobs have publically stated that the company will not support Adobe Flash technology on certain key products. Jobs has claimed that Flash has bugs that impact Apple products and that the multimedia platform is power hungry and can diminish battery life on mobile devices.

Still, there are workarounds that enable the use of Flash on an iPad. For instance, Wyse Technology just released a new version of its PocketCloud application for turning smart devices into fully functioning Windows 7-based thin clients.

Wyse's new PocketCloud for iPad is a $30 app downloadable from the Apple AppStore that allows users to run their Windows 7 environments as a virtual PC with all the expected capabilities, including the ability to run Adobe Flash-based applications.

Despite the warning about risks from Apple, Adobe's share prices rose 53 cents to $35.47 by market close on Friday after opening down about 50 cents per share.