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Flash runs as a plugin inside the webkit based browser and webkit is native code in android since day one.

that also means that you cannot play local .SWF files on android unless you manage to get them inside a web page...

Flash can't run natively "on webkit." Flash file contains bytecode, which has to be either fully interpreted or JIT-ed. It has to be done on mobiles too. The interpreter or JIT-er has to be native. Writing native JIT-ers is hard, to have a native interpreter you can write it in C and recompile it for every platform but it will be significantly slower. In short, it's not easy to make the Flash fast on a new CPU. And no, Webkit is not a CPU.

To be fair, the Android Browser won't let you load local .html files either.

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