Adobe Systems has agreed to acquire Nitobi Software, the Canadian company behind the open source PhoneGap platform for developing mobile applications. It means that Adobe will be able to offer two mobile app development choices: Adobe Flash using Adobe AIR, and HTML5 & JavaScript via PhoneGap.
Danny Winokur, vice president and general manager for Platform at Adobe, said “PhoneGap has proven to be an industry-defining app solution for HTML5 developers. PhoneGap is a fantastic solution for developing a broad range of mobile apps using the latest Web standards, and is already integrated with Dreamweaver CS5.5. It’s a perfect complement to Adobe’s broad family of developer solutions, including Adobe AIR, and will allow us to continue to provide content publishers and developers with the best, cutting-edge solutions for creating innovative applications across platforms and devices.”
PhoneGap’s open source framework has already been downloaded more than 600,000 times and has been used to create thousands of applications for Android, iOS and BlackBerry devices. As part of the deal, Nitobi is donating the PhoneGap code to the Apache Software Foundation.