Flash Ain't Gonna Happen
(this is from an article I recently wrote, and I think it is appropriate to this chat thread)
I will say this for the record, and you are welcome to bet against me…but you’re going to lose your money…the iPhone will NEVER support Flash. Neither will the iPad.
In a recent Town Hall meeting, Steve Jobs said that Flash was too buggy, that the world is moving to HTML5, which is one of the reasons why the iPhone will never support Flash. I personally think he is avoiding the bigger statement: Flash on the iPhone or iPad would make Apple lose money.
Apple is making a fortune selling iPhone apps through the iTunes store. Millions and millions of dollars pour in every month as users buy PacMan, Assassin’s Creed, and Angelina Ballerina Dress-Up (that app is my daughter’s, I swear).
Now imagine what would happen if Apple installed a Flash plugin for the iPhone Safari browser. Soon, somebody would create a really cool, Flash-based PacMan browser application.
Users could then go online on their iPhone and play PacMan, for free, through their web browsers. The programmer would get ad revenue without Apple as the middleman.
And there goes millions of dollars of revenue for Apple. Why allow a browser-based application to take over their business?
Thanks,
Erik