Adobe predicts 1 billion Flash-capable mobile devices by 2015

Adobe has predicted that over one billion smartphones and tablets will be able to play Flash content by 2015, either natively or via the company's Air conversion system.

Air is predominantly used to play Flash content on Apple devices, which prohibit the use of Flash.

The prediction comes alongside the launch of Flash 11 and Air 3, in the face of a increasing market challenge from HTML5, which allows single code builds to be used across multiple operating systems, giving developers increased options for sales with no extra development time, albeit with the cost of a slight performance hit.

Currently, 200 million smartphones and tablets are Flash enabled, with 70 per cent of browser games utilising the technology, while 98 per cent of desktop computers have Flash installed.

Far from seeing that grip on the market as reducing over the coming years, Adobe's director of product marketing, Anup Murarka, believes that his company can increase its share.

However, the developer had to ride out something of a snub from Microsoft, which decided to keep its new 'Metro' edition IE 10 browser completely plug-in free, sidelining Flash completely. Murarka doesn't see it as a setback.

"We are going to keep the pace of innovation on Flash," said the director. "Microsoft was clear that the use case for Flash is on the desktop. Flash will run just fine on the Windows desktop."