Where to Download Flash Player for Android?

Yesterday, Adobe pulled Flash Player for Android from Google Play Store orphaning millions of handsets that depends on the ubiquitous plugin to stream online videos on their devices. The decision to discontinue development of the Flash Player for mobile browsers came last November when Adobe announced that mobile Flash would no longer be supported on Android beyond version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

Most devices typically include the Flash Player pre-loaded at the factory or as part of a system update. Devices that don’t have the Flash Player provided by the manufacturer typically are uncertified, meaning the manufacturer has not completed the certification testing requirements. In many cases users of uncertified devices have been able to download the Flash Player from the Google Play Store, and in most cases it worked. However, with Android 4.1 this is no longer going to be the case, as the company hasn’t continued developing and testing the application for this new version of Android and its browser options.

Beginning on August 15, Adobe will use the configuration settings in the Google Play Store to limit continued access to Flash Player updates to only those devices that already have the player installed, but only for older versions of the Android operating system. If you do not already have Flash on your Android smartphone, you will not be able to get it from Play Store.

While HTML5 is a fairly competent technology, this is not a good move by Adobe because a large number of devices are still running early versions of Android. As of August 2012, 98.5% of Android phones are on version earlier than 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, of which 60.6% phone run version 2.3 Gingerbread.

I’m pretty sure you will be able to download the APK files of Adobe Flash from a variety of file sharing sites, the best source to get them is from Adobe’s own archive. The previously released Flash Player versions are available for developers and consumers alike who need Flash Player for Android. Installations made from the archive however will not receive updates through the Google Play Store.