http://www.digg.com/tech_news/Why_th...t_Flash_8_or_9

The simple answer is that it’s out of both Opera and Nintendo’s hands.
If you want to run Flash outside of Windows, Linux, or Mac, you need the Flash SDK (Software Development Kit), which is made by Adobe.
As a result, the Flash SDK is needed to run the Wii and Opera’s mobile browser on phones.
The problem however is, Adobe hasn’t released Flash 8 or 9 on their SDK, and until they do so, there’s nothing we could do about it.

Yep, so it's really not Nokia's fault after all that we're still stuck with Flash 6 and 7 on the tablets. Guess we'll have to work with what we've got until Adobe gets its act together. I'll be looking into how much we can push the capabilities of flash on the 770 soon. From the way things are shaping up with the incompatibilities between the two devices (770 and N800), Flash is looking like a more reasonable option for simple application development. At least there's less worry about installing anything with the "Application Mangler".