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Our friend Jens Chr Brynildsen, a Flash expert who maintains a number of resources for the standard including Flash Magazine, has reportedly confirmed with Adobe Systems’ senior director of engineering, Paul Betlem, that Flash is coming to the iPhone. However, Betlem says that “Apple calls the shots as to when it’ll be available.”

Brynildsen got the confirmation at an Adobe Town Hall meeting session. He reports:

Upon a direct question from the audience, Paul Betlem for the first time publicly confirmed that Adobe is actively developing a Flash Player for Apple’s popular phone. He said (not direct quote) ‘My team is working on Flash on the iPhone, but it’s a closed platform.’ He noted that Apple makes all the decisions, so in other words, the ball is in Apple’s yard at this time. If Apple says yes, Adobe will have the player available in a very short time.

In mid-June, Adobe’s CEO said that company already has Flash running on an iPhone emulator (presumably the same emulator included with Apple’s iPhone SDK).

As we’ve pointed out several times, Flash performance and usage is abysmal on current mobile devices that support playback. Mobile device processors–including the iPhone’s–simply aren’t fast enough to handle most Flash-laden sites. Flash Lite, the scaled down standard designed specifically for mobile devices, is even too much for most devices, and isn’t widely used.

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas.