Today Adobe announced that Flash Professional CS5 will allow Flash developers and designers to create native iPhone apps.

The applications are built using the current rules of Apple's iPhone Developer Program. They are designed and built utilizing Action Script 3 with Flash platform tooling. Developers can take advantage of the accelerometer and the multi-touch capabilities of the iPhone using Flash Professional CS5.

This is pretty exciting, especially when you consider the amount of Flash games on the Web right now that are unavailable on the iPhone.

Adobe showcased a few applications that have already been built using Flash Professional CS5 that are already in the App Store.

Fickleblox - $.99

Chroma Circuit - $.99

Updated: If you're interested in joining the public beta of Flash Professional CS5, sign up here. Adobe told us that it would be live before the end of the calendar year. A release date for the CS5 Suite hasn't been set yet. Adobe updates their CS suite every 18 to 24 months. 

As of now, there is no word on if iPhone features beyond multi-touch and the accelerometer, like the compass, camera, etc, will be available via the Adobe Flash Professional CS5 developing environment. 

If you plan on developing an app using Flash CS5, check out this Adobe Developer Connection blog posting about using the upcoming Flash app to develop for iPhone.The most interesting part is how the porcess works:

How it all works

We enabled this by using the Low Level Virtual Machine (LLVM) compiler infrastructure. LLVM is a modular, flexible compiler system that is used widely in a variety of projects. The key reason we choose LLVM is its flexibility and applicability to iPhone development.

We created a new compiler front end that allowed LLVM to understand ActionScript 3 and used its existing ARM back end to output native ARM assembly code. We call this Ahead of Time (AOT) compilation—in contrast to the way Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR function on the desktop using Just in Time (JIT) compilation. Since we are able to compile ActionScript to ARM ahead of time, the application gets all the performance benefits that the JIT would offer and the license compliance of not requiring a runtime in the final application.

By doing the compilation step, we allow developers to create applications using their Flash skills and their knowledge of ActionScript 3. In the process, we also expose the APIs that developers are familiar with so they can not only use the ActionScript language but follow the customary app-building model. When you build your application for the iPhone, there is no interpreted code and no runtime in your final binary. Your application is truly a native iPhone app.

We'll keep an eye on this as it unfolds.