Flash Wars – Apple vs Adobe and the Impact on Your Business
The explosion of the mobile web has created a feud between Apple and Adobe. Apple produces the iphone, ipod touch, and ipad. These devices have changed the way we access the Internet. As of May 2010 Apple has sold over 85 million iphone / ipod touches and over 1.5 million ipads. The success of these products has given Apple a lot of power and they are currently using it to attack Adobe, the company that owns flash technology.
Currently the iphone, ipod touch, and ipad do not support Flash and according to the CEO of Apple, Steve jobs, they never will. If you own one of these devices you have most likely come across missing content with a little blue box in its place while surfing the web. The missing content is a flash movie.
Apple argues that flash technology drains batteries, is hard on operating systems, and poses security issues. Recently, product analyst Phillip Grønvold, for browser maker Opera joined the debate stating that “you can cook an egg on [devices] once you start running Flash on them and there’s a reason for that.”
How the Debate Will Impact Your Business
With over 85 million devices sold, Apple is changing the way people surf the web. According to Morgan Stanley’s April 2010 State of the Internet Report, mobile Internet growth is surpassing the PCs, and Apple devices are driving that growth. Morgan Stanley goes on to predict that more people will be accessing the web via mobile devices than laptops within 5 years.
As a business owner, it is time to start planning for the future. Your website will need a mobile strategy. If Apple continues to block flash from its devices, sites that rely heavily on this technology will need to adjust their design. In addition to flash, mobile browsers display websites at a much smaller resolution than PCs. As more and more people access the web via the mobile device, it will become increasingly important to test your website in a variety of screen resolutions and mobile operating systems / browsers.
Currently, mobile traffic is probably a small percentage of your website’s overall traffic. I recommend that you continue to watch your analytics reports to see what operating systems and browsers people are using to access your website. If you are using Google Analytics you can find this information under visitors –> mobile or visitors –> browser capabilities. Start planning for the future so your business is not left behind when the web goes mobile.
Which side of the Flash debate are you on? Let us know by commenting below.
