By Stephen Schenck | August 14, 2012 4:25 PM
After failing capture the mobile market in the way it might have hoped, last November Adobe decided to put an end to Flash for Android. Since then, the plug-in’s been stagnating, but tomorrow’s about to see a major step towards Flash finally being gone for good, with Adobe cutting-off new installations.
Adobe’s been remarkably accommodating towards Android Flash fans, delivering a new version with support for Ice Cream Sandwich even after announcing the product’s demise, as well as providing the occasional security patch. That couldn’t last forever, though, and with the arrival of Jelly Bean, Adobe made it clear that we’d finally have to start weaning ourselves off Flash.
As of tomorrow, August 15, users with Flash installed on their Androids will continue to be able to update the software, should Adobe release any more of those security patches, but it will no longer be available for download through the Google Play Store. Adobe will continue to maintain archived historical releases for developers to test content with, but these manually-installed versions won’t be able to update through the Play Store.
Sure, you can always find a Flash APK to side-load later on, but if you want to save yourself a little hassle, you might want to visit the Play Store before the end of the day. We’ll be sad to see Flash go, wondering what could have been if Adobe stuck things out, but smartphones will survive without it just fine.
