Adobe is effectively killing off its Flash Player browser plug-in for Android. The current version of Flash will no longer be downloadable after August 15th.
Adobe will not be developing a version for Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, and the current version of Flash won’t be supported by Adobe on Jelly Bean (if you can get it to work on the new OS at all). Users can only maintain a certified installation of Flash – including future security updates – if they have a device that came with Flash pre-installed and do not update to Android 4.1.
Users who download the Flash Player themselves from Google Play before August 15 technically have an “non-certified” installation, but may continue to receive security updates as long as they don’t upgrade to Android Jelly Bean.
This news comes as no surprise to the tech world, as Adobe announced over seven months ago that it was halting development of Flash Player for mobile devices. The company promised to continue releasing security fixes, however, and one such update was just released earlier this month. Adobe has refocused its mobile efforts on Adobe AIR and HTML5.