Apple’s announcement today that it has lifted restrictions on its third-party developer guidelines has direct implications for Adobe’s Packager for iPhone, a feature in the Flash Professional CS5 authoring tool. This feature was created to enable Flash developers to quickly and easily deliver applications for iOS devices. The feature is available for developers to use today in Flash Professional CS5, and we will now resume development work on this feature for future releases.

This is great news for developers and we’re hearing from our developer community that Packager apps are already being approved for the App Store. We do want to point out that Apple’s restriction on Flash content running in the browser on iOS devices remains in place.

Adobe will continue to work to bring full web browsing with Flash Player 10.1 as well as standalone applications on AIR to a broad range of devices, working with key industry partners including Google, HTC, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Palm/HP, RIM, Samsung and others.

Smartphones like the HTC Evo and the HTC Desire have started to receive Flash Player 10.1 as part of the Android 2.2 “Froyo” update.  And, today, Motorola and Verizon announced the new Droid 2.  It’s great to see one of the first smartphones to come pre-installed with the completely redesigned Flash Player 10.1.  Users can experience the full web with millions of web sites the way they were meant to be seen.  Flash Player 10.1 on the Droid 2 is hardware accelerated and gives users seamless access to rich apps and other Flash content inside the browser like games, animations, rich Internet apps, e-commerce, music, video, audio, and much more.  Check out droiddoes.com for more information and watch the demo video below of Flash running on the Droid 2.  Many more smartphones like the HTC Incredible, the Samsung Galaxy S, Motorola Milestone, Droid X and others will support Flash Player 10.1 in the following weeks.  We’ll keep you posted.

Earlier today, we introduced a new member of the Adobe Reader family, Adobe Reader for Android. This free app is now available in the Android Market, so go take a look and give it a test drive.

Adobe Reader for Android enables you to access PDF files on your Android device whether you’re browsing the web or reading an email. It includes some cool features like multi-touch gestures, pinch-and-zoom, flick-scrolling and panning. And my favorite, a “reflow” mode, which wraps the content of PDF files for viewing on smartphone screens.

Check out the post on the Adobe Reader blog, which includes a video demo of the app.