Microsoft Adopts Adobe Flash; Scores Touchdown Against Apple

I’m no developer, but from my vantage point, Microsoft (MSFT) scores one against Apple (AAPL) for embracing Adobe’s (ADBE) flash. In fact, if the game was football, this would be a touchdown. How so?

1. As Google’s (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt is lobbying that a Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo! (YHOO) would break the Web, Microsoft shows that it can embrace another standard on mobile that competes with one of its own.
2. Of course, for any handheld to function and thrive, it needs flash… because flash is ubiquitous in online video. Video will undoubtedly drive wireless entertainment and mobile advertising. I am not saying that Apple and its iPhone will not do well on this front, but it won’t do as well as it should due to its snobbish rejection of Adobe’s flash. So in this context, MSFT just gave its own mobile OS a shot in the arm by embracing flash.

To put this all into context, from News.com:

Flash Lite has several limitations compared with regular Flash, beyond the inability to support much of Flash 9. Apple CEO Steve Jobs rather emphatically declared his disdain for Flash Lite at Apple’s annual shareholder meeting, saying Flash Lite was “not capable of being used with the Web.” Murarka declined to comment specifically on Jobs’ put-down, but noted that Flash Lite ships on 500 million mobile devices.

He did acknowledge that developers using Adobe’s Flex tools can’t build Flash Lite Web pages, although the newer CS3 suite of tools does support Flash Lite.

But one huge advantage of Flash Lite is that it’s currently available for mobile devices. Microsoft’s Silverlight for Mobile is not.

Silverlight is Microsoft’s attempt to rein in on Adobe’s position in the Web development market with Flash. Microsoft is fighting an uphill battle, though, in trying to get Web developers to build sites using its technology as opposed to Adobe’s.

Then again, I am biased, because flash is integral to WatchMojo.com on our property… but on syndication network, we are as neutral and agnostic as you can get.

We’ll have a few pieces of news pertaining to Adobe ourselves…

Comments

[mr.bean]

Wouldn't it be more appropriate to change the title to MSFT scores a touchdown against Apple???

[Tom B]

Flash was cool about 5 years ago. Now, it's almost worse that useless. About once a week some flash-based ad right here on SA sucks up evry last CPU cycle and leaves me banging on my desk waiting for it to end. I can only imagine how mad I would be if this happened on my phone, too.

[ashkankarbasfrooshan]

Mr. Bean you are right, not sure why it says Google...

[amusedbystander]

flash video was ubiquitous last year, but starting from release 9 the flash player has had to support h.264 (mp4) video, which is higher quality, standards based and the format used by all apple products. Youtube itself has started using H.264, mostly to support iphones. Flash lite uses devices' native video support, since it has none of its own.

I'm far from being an apple fanboy, but msft's adoption of flash lite is not a touchdown, just an admission of defeat of silverlight on mobiles.

[softpork]

there is room for two players in that space
silverlight's rich-content qualities and its economical delivery will eventually prevail in the rarefied fortune 500 atmosphere...

this said, flash will forever be the mass media dissemination tool that it is now

don't forget, this is just the beginning of a long journey :-)

[PK deC'ville]

Ashkan,

I'm not sure this is a TD for MSFT. It might be one for AAPL. I think Jobs is signaling Adobe he wants a major FL upgrade - higher quality, faster, more reliable.

Apple would be very happy to have an excellent FL running on its phone and Jobs is angling for that.

[steveballmer]

You people are soooo easy to fool! Just because we said we would doesn't mean we will! Right now we do and say anything that will get us good press!