Flash Not Working On iPad is “Not That Big Of A Deal For Adobe”

Following our discussion of MediaBeacon’s promotion of their support for the iPad, respected streaming media industry analyst, Dan Rayburn writing on his Streamingmedia.com blog last week declared that “Not having Flash working on the iPad is not that big of a deal for Adobe”:

While Flash was never supported on the iPhone, we didn’t see much of a stink made about it until the iPad came out. Why is Adobe so concerned with the iPad? Even if the device sells 10M units in the next two years, it’s not even 1% of all the connected devices on the web. Not having Flash working on the iPad is not that big of a deal for Adobe. It’s a much larger problem for Apple since as a consumer, the browsing experience I get on the iPad is terrible. I bought the device from Apple, so they get the blame for that, not Adobe. Now I do realize that the iPhone has a large footprint and unlike the iPad, has real adoption. But that one device alone will not make or break Adobe’s business. [Read More]

Rayburn also makes some notable points about Adobe’s channel ecosystem advantages over Apple for content production and how their reluctance to get behind http streaming is impacting on their ability to take on Apple:

The bottom line is that there is a lot more at stake for Adobe than whether or not Flash works on the iPad. That’s what the media and bloggers want to talk about, but there is a much bigger story here. Yes, Adobe would lose some revenue from content owners not using Adobe products to generate content for the iPhone and iPad, but they will lose even more once HTTP streaming takes over if they don’t throw their weight behind it now. [Read More]

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