RIM Still Has Adobe's Flash on Its BlackBerry Radar

Posted 08/04/2010 at 10:23am | by Paul Lilly

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Research in Motion (RIM) this week unveiled its BlackBerry Torch 9800 smartphone, the first phone to run RIM's new BlackBerry 6 OS. Not among the supported features, however, is Flash support.

Unlike Apple, which refuses to work with Adobe in porting Flash over to its smartphones, RIM has real interest in running Adobe's multimedia platform, at least once the kinks are worked out.

"What's really important... is to get it right. Flash and Flash video have very specific hardware, CPU, and memory requirements," said Tyler Lessard, vice president of global alliances and developer relations at RIM.

"We don't want to deliver an experience that users are going to get really excited about -- perhaps buy a new device just because it supports Flash -- and then find it doesn't work as they hoped it to," he said.

Given that the two companies announced last October that they were working together to bring Flash to BlackBerry devices, it's a little surprising they couldn't get it down in time for the Torch 9800 launch. And while it would appear that support is imminent, neither side is willing to give a time frame.