Adobe is removing its Flash Player from the Google Play store as of today, citing a number of reasons for the withdrawal of what has become a byword for online multimedia content.

The software firm says that it will continue to develop the software  for PCs and will provide security updates to Flash mobile users into 2013.

Adobe says that it is removing the Flash player all together since it is likely that it will exhibit “unpredictable behaviour” if used with the new version of Google’s mobile platform, Android Jelly Bean.

The firm has also recommended that Android users who have upgraded their phone to Jelly Bean should uninstall Flash from their devices.

Whilst Adobe has also ended support for Flash on BlackBerry and Symbian devices the firm has never developed a version for Windows Phone and the software was not taken up by Apple for its iOS operating system.

Steve Jobs questioned the reliability of Flash and was concerned about the effect it would have on a device’s battery life. Apple instead chose to support HTML5, with YouTube having since gone on to encode its videos in this format.

Adobe has said that it will go on to boost its investment in HTML5, calling it “the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms”.