In 2011, Adobe announced that they were no longer going to be actively developing the Flash Player for mobile browsers and now they have announced that they will not support Flash Player browser plugins for Android 4.1 and onward. So what does the future hold for mobile viewing?
More people are using mobile devices. This is a fact that has been corroborated by a mountain of studies and marketing reports. The mobility of smartphones, tablets and iPod Touches account for higher video app viewing levels during the daytime even when users are at home and have access to their desktops and televisions. New data released by the Cable and Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) stated that YouTube, iTunes and other video playing apps are significantly more likely to be used on mobile devices such as the iPod Touch, smartphones or tablets compared to in-home devices such as internet-connected TVs, internet-connected video devices and gaming consoles. Users simply don’t consume content on mobile in the same way they do on desktop. With differences in screen sizes and the ubiquity of app stores, Flash had become less relevant on handheld devices over the last year or so.
Also, the reality was that without Flash being enabled on Apple devices, there was a high probability that it would have been rendered obsolete one way or another.
In 2010, in an open letter to Adobe, Steve Jobs stated that Flash “drains the battery of mobile devices; it’s not very good for multi-touch operation; and its performance, reliability and security are all shoddy.”
Jobs further explained in his letter that “Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.”
Flash is also a proprietary system, and while Jobs admitted that their mobile OS is also proprietary, he claimed that web standards should be open, like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.
HTML5: The Future
Flash is a multimedia software used to run movies, games and other applications. It can only be installed in Android 2.2+, Blackberry PlayBook and HP webOS. Apple’s iOS devices and Windows Phone devices don’t include support for Flash and they never will.
In 2011, Danny Winokur, Vice President and General Manager of Interactive Development at Adobe announced that they would be focusing more on PC browsing and mobile apps in the future. He stated, “HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively. This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms.” The post then adds, “We are super excited about the next generations of HTML5 and Flash. Together they offer developers and content publishers great options for delivering compelling web and application experiences across PCs and devices.”
Developers that want to build mobile apps right now have two options: either build HTML5 apps that work in any modern browser or create native apps for iOS, Android and other platforms. HTML5 is the future for rich multimedia content on mobile devices.
“On mobile devices, HTML5 provides a similar level of ubiquity that the Flash Player provides on the desktop,”says Mike Chambers, a Flash and Adobe veteran. Even Microsoft is focusing more on HTML5. It’s clear, Steve Jobs was right. Flash is out and HTML5 is IN.
The mobile viewing flash dilemma is therefore no more. HTML5 is here and offers much more diversity and versatility than Flash ever could.