Is there any future in doing mobile development in flash CC

Question

Hello all,
I was after peoples thoughts on if there is any future in doing mobile development in flash CC?
Initially I was quite excited but I have just tried to put something together and have hit some hurdles quickly.
At this stage the cons seem to be outweighing the pros.
As I see it
Pros are.
    •    Multi-platform deployment (write once and output to many devices)
    •    Easy to use flash
    •    Large resource of action-script.
    •    Supported by Adobe (I hope..)
Cons are
    •    Poor multi touch support (no double tap support)
    •    No easy way of getting user input (as in uipicker etc)
    •    Poor performance (not being native code)
    •    Uncertain future of flash  /  flex
    •    Can not use any flash vector
    •    Dependant on if device will keep allowing flex

Answer 1

I'd have to adjust that list of cons a bit, going point by point:
...no double tap support
While it's true that not every gesture has been coded in AIR, you can always implement them yourself. In fact the ones you tend not to see are the easiest to implement. Double tab can easily be duplicated by a single object.
In a view you wish to utilize it you can simply use a single object to store the last object tapped and the getTimer() it was tapped. Adding one more line of code to see if the last time it was tapped was "quickly enough", you'll know if the user double tapped.
Yes, it's not ideal that they didn't wrap under a dozen lines of code for you, but I wouldn't say it lacks support unless it was either incredibly difficult to implement yourself, or impossible.
...as in uipicker etc
There are (as you said) substantial resources out there for all sorts of Flash based components. They can all be used in your project, just as on the web. You'd be smart to stick to anything GPU accelerated, like FeathersUI.
That said I'd say there's a LOT more components already developed of all sorts for Flash than any native SDK.
Poor performance (not being native code)
Stage3D performs quite amazingly. About as close to native (or better) as you can get, depending on what you're doing. The only difference is you have the power of a familiar multimedia engine wrapped around it so you're not stuck ripping apart native SDK components until they don't look like themselves (otherwise the app looks slapped together).
I suggest you try the previously linked GPU controls before you think the performance is actually poor.
Uncertain future of flash  /  flex
Can't comment here, the roadmap is as unpredictable as the mobile landscape itself. Flash has a ton of uses outside mobile apps or website video/banners. It's used to make kiosks, top tier presentations, learning tools for students new to programming, sophisticated/interactive animations and 3d, etc.
Flex is completely different.
Can not use any flash vector
I'm not sure what you mean by this. I use plenty of them. I typically use the graphics system to draw dytnamic interface elements and then raster them into bitmaps for presentation in Stage3D.
Dependant on if device will keep allowing flex
The device doesn't "allow" SWF or Flex. It is compiled down to ARMv7 compatible code. It has no idea what created the code. C++, Obj-c, Java, Perl, Python, Ruby or even LOLScript could be ported as long as the target is ARMv7 compatible code (soon to be ARMv8 64bit, Apple opening that door).
That all aside, I've definitely been scorched by the differences between implementations of Android and iOS with AIRs limitations. While you're using the majority (hopefully) of your code base for both targets, you will definitely have differences to conform to the platforms needs.
In the end, having had plenty of experience with the pitfalls of both, I see 2 things, which has already been living amongst us the entire time.
1) AIR is being used where there is a need that no other runtime fills quite so nicely.
With Adobe Native Extensions and a sophisticated 2D/3D GPU leveraging multimedia engine behind you, it's hard to find any other authoring environment more desirable.
Even though Phonegap has native extensions, I think we can all pick out a webpage-as-an-app easily. AIR is far more difficult to spot because your imagination is the limit.
That said, much like in the beginning, Flash was utilized to solve all our video/audio codec and font problems. We abused and over used it until technology matured so we could properly handle these issues. That leads to:
2) The web is maturing the requirements of browsers to the point they're becoming multimedia engines or hosts themselves. Requiring them to implement 2D Canvas, WebGL and standardized JavaScript and CSS specification, we're maturing the web enough to replace AIR.
Now that browsers allow JavaScript to power single application pages (SAP), apps will probably start to fall off in usage, much like the abuse of Flash. Apps only solve a current problem, lack of acceess to capability. Soon we probably won't need Phonegap and native extensions as the only way of developing a truely sophisticated device site.
I imagine users would rather just use their browser to load a web address which can store everything necessary to operate with offline storage, rather than lurking through a sea of hundreds of thousands (or millions+) apps. And once again people will return to the matured web with little to no need for everything to be AIR, native code or some variant.
Change is constant..