• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, November 10, 2011

In what you might call a backend bombshell, Adobe this week revealed plans to ditch Flash for mobile devices, and instead focus on HTML5 and Adobe AIR.

Who cares?

For one, “those [people] whose job it is to market and sell Android tablets,” writes AllThingsD. “Flash support has been one of the key advantages that aspiring iPad competitors have used to tout their devices.”

“Adobe will have a PR nightmare on its hands trying to convince its three million Flash developers to scrap projects in Flash and move to HTML5,” notes ReadWriteWeb, citing comments from Carlos Icaza, a former manager and engineer of Flash at Adobe.

Not lost on anyone, “The announcement comes after Apple boldly chose not to support Flash on the iPhone in 2007, citing concerns about the technology’s performance,” writes VentureBeat. “Now it seems Steve Jobs was right all along.”

CNN goes so far as to ask if Steve Job killed -- or is killing -- Flash.

So, what’s in store for Flash?

Well, “Adobe's decision to stop Flash Player development for mobile browsers will likely be repeated for browsers on the desktop, just not anytime soon,” writes PCWorld, citing analysts. 

Indeed, “they're not getting out the Flash business," Ray Valdes, an analyst with Gartner, said of Adobe "But clearly they see that the future is HTML5."

Likewise, “as the Web moves more toward an HTML-oriented approach for multimedia content, perhaps the need for mobile Flash access will diminish,” Computerworld concedes. “Right now, though, there's still plenty of content that is Flash-based out there.”