The upcoming version of Flash CS5 will allow you the option to “Export Project to native iPhone application.” You then get a file you can submit to the App Store. This isn’t some far of alpha either. There are already apps in the app store (South Park!) that have been developed with Flash, though a full release isn’t expected to be out until Flash CS5 – which you can be notified of here. Wow. (BTW, is that a Digg.app we see up there? WAs it made with Flash?) This would be the first third-party application development environment for the iPhone and one we’re not so sure Apple will sanction.
This is also interesting because some feel that Apple’s Keynote is an alternative development environment to Flash because it allows you to export simple animated presentations to .swf format without using Flash (we’re not so sure about that classification, however).