Motorola Xoom Launches Without Flash

[~IronMan~]

Motorola's Flash-free Xoom tablet at the Mobile World Congress. Photo: Charlie Sorrel


Motorola’s $800 white elephant, the Xoom tablet, will ship without Adobe’s Flash browser plugin. The news, gleaned from small print on Verizon’s new Xoom per-order page, has been confirmed by both Motorola and Adobe.

If you remember, Motorola has promised us the “full web”, in the form of Flash support. It seems that Adobe still hasn’t finished the 10.2 version of its proprietary plugin, though. The Verizon ad says that “Adobe Flash [is] expected Spring 2011.” Motorola is even less specific in its official statement “Motorola XOOM will include full support for Adobe® Flash® Player® for accessing the rich video and animations of the web, to be available after launch.” [emphasis added].

And what about Adobe? Here’s the official line:

Adobe will offer Flash Player 10.2 pre-installed on some tablets and as an OTA download on others within a few weeks of Android 3 (Honeycomb) devices becoming available, the first of which is expected to be the Motorola Xoom.

I had some hands-on time with the Xoom at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week. I (and some friendly German journos I ran into at the Motorola booth) wondered about Flash support. I surfed to a restaurant website (these are seemingly the only sites left on the web that require Flash) and got the familiar blue Lego “Flash not installed” symbol. We checked the settings, and Flash was indeed absent.

Flash is largely old news. Most of what anyone thinks they need Flash for has already been re-optimized for tablets. But if you make it a headline feature for your new device, and can’t deliver until a vague future date, then it’s a little embarrassing. But not, I suspect, as embarrassing as the battery life of a tablet with Flash enabled.

Update for Flash Player 10.2 Support on Tablets [Adobe Flash Blog]

Xoom product page [Verizon via Engadget]
See Also:

• Report: Motorola Xoom Tablet to Cost a Hefty $800
• Motorola Thinks You'll Pay $800 for the Xoom Tablet
• Video: Adobe Air, Flash Demonstrated on RIM PlayBook Tablet …
• Adobe Demonstrates Flash on Android Tablet
• First Look: HP's Untouchable TouchPad Tablet