Adobe Systems on Wednesday backpedaled on recent comments from chief executive Shantanu Narayen, saying the company wants to build a Flash media player for the iPhone, but would not be able to without Apple's help.

In an emailed statement Adobe says it can now start working on the iPhone Flash Player,

"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," the company said. "We think Flash availability on the iPhone benefits Apple and Adobe's millions of joint customers, so we want to work with Apple to bring these capabilities to the device."

Earlier Narayen had said that, We have evaluated (the software developer tools) and we think we can develop an iPhone Flash player ourselves."

Read More