Via heise: The free Flash Player plug-in for Pocket Internet Explorer is no longer available. Instead, Macromedia is now selling a stand-alone player for 500 US dollars (or 570 Euros in Germany — almost 90 Euros more, unless Macromedia is running into some weird customs issues for whatever reason — , intended for “developers and [content?] providers”, who then in turn can, it appears, provide players for free for their customers.

Another good example of how proprietary formats can rape you. The only major non-Macromedia player that supports Flash that I know of is QuickTime, and that doesn’t exist for Pocket PC to begin with.

Well, dear “developers and providers”, if only you had used a certain open standard instead, we wouldn’t be having this problem. Maybe, though, it gives people more food for thought when pondering whether to ‘enhance’ their sites with Flash content.

Update: John Dowdell of Macromedia points to an explanation by a colleague of his.

The gist of it:

Because of changes to the operating system and hardware of new devices, we cannot guarantee that Flash Player 6 for Pocket PC will work consistently when playing Flash content.

These inconsistencies and limitations exist on noncertified devices, many of which come from OEMs producing new Pocket PC devices.

Rather than continuing to deal with resulting support issues, Macromedia decided to encourage (if not somewhat force) vendors to provide Flash Player on their devices, dealing with support themselves.

Very understandable now. Curiously, if I was able to get this information (by John posting in my blog) without even asking for it, why was heise not? Doesn’t bode well for traditional journalism.

Thanks again, John, for clarification.

Update 2: Even better, Macromedia has decided to provide the 2003 version of the player for free — again, without support, for reasons stated. Read John’s comment for more information.

Excellent response.