Palm Pre Will Offer Flash Video... Eventually

Palm, Inc. has made a move that should eventually bring Adobe's Flash Player for smartphones to its new webOS platform, and the first device running it, the Palm Pre.

The company announced today it is joining Adobe Systems Open Screen Project – a broad industry initiative dedicated to enabling the Adobe Flash Platform on a wide variety of devices, from desktops to televisions.

"We're aiming to bring a rich, Flash technology-enabled browsing experience to Palm's impressive web browser," said Michele Turner, vice president for Product Marketing, Flash Platform Business Unit at Adobe. 

A Flash player is on virtually all desktop PCs, but has only been slowly creeping onto smartphones. Devices without it aren't be able to easily view many web sites, as these depend on Flash for navigation. In addition, popular sites like Hulu, Fox on Demand, and NBC.com require a high-performance Flash player to view their videos.

Today's announcement doesn't mean the Pre will have Flash support on the day it is released, though. Adobe's Flash Player for smartphones isn't expected to be available until the end of 2009.

An Overview of the Palm Pre
The Palm Pre will be the first device to use Palm's just-announced webOS. This will be a multi-tasking operating system with a strong focus on the Web, that is able to synchronize data with variety of online services like Google and Facebook.

The Pre itself will feature a sliding keyboard as well as a multitouch-capable 3.1-inch display. This device will also be equipped with 8 GB of onboard storage, Wi-Fi b/g, Bluetooth 2.1, and a 3.0 megapixel camera with LED flash. 

It will be exclusively available from Sprint for quite some time after its launch.

Source:Adobe