Adobe and Flash are making progress on the iPhone platform, but it's slow going. It has recently been announced that Flash will be available for every smart-phone platform by early 2010.... except the iPhone.

What is the reasoning behind this? Jobs' has claimed that Flash is too resource intensive.. but if you look at some of the other phones with flash available it's quite easy to see that the iPhone has more power then almost any other phone out there so if they can do it, surely the iPhone can.

The real reason behind it is control. Having a flash capable iPhone gives application developers an opportunity to bypass the app store and deliver applications directly to customers. (Source)

As we've witnessed previously, Apple likes everything to be open and free. Unless they already have control of the market. When that happens they seem to crave control. We of course all admit that this is quite ironic. It's a "do as I say, not as I do" policy, and one that we truly believe needs to change.

Here's where it gets interesting though. Adobe, not willing to give up entirely has just released a Beta version of the Adobe Flash Professional CS5 that allows you to build iPhone native apps with flash. They actually compile the flash source code with an "Ahead of Time" compiler to run natively on the iPhone app.

They have a few demonstration movies that look impressive and very responsive.  You can read more about it on the Adobe blog post.

Despite how exciting this sounds, there's reason that a full fledged Flash player for the iPhone is still needed. Jeff Rock has an excellent post on his blog that lists just a few reasons why Adobe's interim solution is not entirely ideal and can lead to trouble if you plan to use this method to develop for the iPhone.

With that said, we all hope that eventually this Flash vs. iPhone mess will work itself out. Our goal, and yours too, should be to have an open market where the consumer has choice. Flash on the iPhone only helps you in the long run via more choice.