Motorola Xoom Launches Without Flash

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 plug-in. The news, gleaned from small print on Verizon?s new Xoom pre-order page, has been confirmed by both Motorola and Adobe.

Update: The $800 launch price for the Xoom has been confirmed by the company?s press release. It will also be available for $600 with a two-year Verizon contract.

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 plug-in, 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 things Flash is used for have 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:

apple ipod download apple ipod help apple ipod manual apple ipod nano