RIM, Apple Slow Adobe's Flash

When Flash 10 comes to mobile phones in the fall, it will be available for Android (GOOG), the Palm (PALM) Pre, Symbian S60 and even Windows Mobile. This leaves out the BlackBerry (RIMM) and iPhone (AAPL) — roughly 30% of the world market (and the majority of the US market).

Obviously this is not a technical issue — the ARM processors on the missing phones are no less capable than those that will have Flash. In the long-running iPhone saga, Steve Jobs has been explicit in rejecting the need for Flash.

This obviously slows Adobe’s (ADBE) efforts to make Flash a ubiquitous cross-platform mobile phone media platform, building upon its success delivering annoying animated ads (as well as YouTube videos) to desktop owners.

Will phone buyers prefer a phone that has Flash over a phone that doesn’t? So far, there’s no evidence that Flash matters that much, but my hunch is if either RIM or Apple gives in to Adobe, the other will have to follow.

Meanwhile, economists and pundits crow about the importance of open standards, but then developers take the lazy way out and use a proprietary platform like Flash because it is powerful with good tools. (Like all proprietary systems, it’s partly open — in this case not being died to any particular hardware.)

So it’s fine to say that, all things being equal, developers and users and MIS managers prefer open standards over proprietary standards. The problem with that claim is that all things are never equal: the creator of a mostly proprietary standard has financial resources rarely available to more open standards (with their more limited options for appropriation).

Adobe has done a good job of re-investing the rents provided by its control of Flash to continuously advance the platform. In doing so, it builds upon the successful efforts by Macromedia since it bought FutureWave Splash in December 1996. (Ironically, Adobe founder John Warnock turned down the opportunity to buy Splash the year before.)

Comments

[jmmx:]

"... in this case not being died to any particular hardware."

Has it died? Poor thing.

Jun 30 12:19 PM

[scottydawg:]

"...developers take the lazy way out and use a proprietary platform..."

I thought good developers are, by definition, striving toward "laziness" - or efficiency, as I'd prefer to call it. Code re-use, unit testing, frameworks, etc. are all intended to improve efficiency. Any full-time developer with strict project timelines (so...all of us) is going to use the most personally efficient tool available, proprietary or not.

Jun 30 04:33 PM

[vassar:]

I hate FLASH. Most FLASH web pages are just crappy eye candy. Thank GOD the iPhone doesn't have FLASH

Jun 30 07:26 PM

[Tom B:]

Agreed. The talking-head tech pundits have a MUCH higher opinion of the CPU-sucking nuisance known as Flash than actual users do. Most of what you want to do in Flash can be done using more battery-friendly methods, anyway, and this impacts laptop users as well as smartphone users; thus, I really think Adobe's got an albatross around its neck. And Silverlight's no better. Worse, actually, because the development tools are weaker.

Jul 01 02:49 PM