Is Adobe planning a Flash for iPhone or not? Well, could be, but not as we saw it from Chief Executive Shantaru Narayen’s statement. Adobe said it was a question of misinterpreting what Narayen said, in other words, Adobe is not working on a Flash player for the iPhone, but if they would, they’d have to do it in collaboration with Apple, as its development would take more than just the SDK.

Adobe released a statement saying: “Adobe has evaluated the iPhone SDK and can now start to develop a way to bring Flash Player to the iPhone. However, to bring the full capabilities of Flash to the iPhone Web-browsing experience we do need to work with Apple beyond and above what is available through the SDK and the current license around it.”

Narayen had previously stated that they are “committed to bringing the Flash experience to the iPhone” and that after evaluating the SDK “can now start to develop the Flash player.” However, and that’s probably where the misinterpretation came in, according to the company, Narayen also said they wanted to work with Apple for that and they “will work with Apple,” but that apparently isn’t a confirmation...

It makes it quite hard to interpret things now… First Jobs said Flash was “too slow to be useful,” then Adobe’s Chief Executive said they are committed to bringing the Flash to iPhone now that SDK is out and collaborate with Apple, then Adobe said the SDK is not enough to offer Flash the browsing experience suitable for the iPhone…

This points out to two things: one of them is that Adobe has a long way to go before making Jobs happy, and the second one is that Apple is not as open as we thought with the SDK, since Adobe said the development kit just won’t do and they need Apple’s collaboration. We’re going to have to wait and see how this story ends.