Adobe Forced To Acknowledge Risks From iPhone/iPad Exclusion in SEC Filings


As reported in Business Week on April 9th, Adobe has been forced to acknowledge the risks to their stock price as a result of Apple’s deliberate legal blocking of Flash content from Apple iPhones and iPads in the latest OS4 release.

“Historically, when we have seen increased competition for any of our products or technologies, we have always identified these risk factors,” she [Adobe spokeswoman, Holly Campbell] said in an e-mailed statement. Today’s disclosures are a “continuation of our efforts to be current in this area.” . [Read More]

As reported on DaringFireball.net, the text of the clause blocking access reads:

Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited). [Read More]

As reported on All Things Digital in a video interview with Adobe’s CTO, Kevin Lynch, Adobe have reacted angrily to Apple’s latest manoeuvres, calling it a “protectionist strategy” that was “bad for consumers.”

The war of words between Apple and Adobe complicates the use of Flash for Digital Asset Management (including both vendors and users alike) because it now presents a multitude of competing technologies for Video delivery at a time when video support is considered essential for most DAM solutions.  That Flash is now deliberately excluded from iPhones is not the significant issue, more that other technologies will be given an opportunity to gain a foothold and potentially usurp the current market leader.

At present, the majority of vendors will probably stay with Flash as the most practical solution in the short-medium term, but, if the forthcoming release of Flash CS5 is not widely adopted, we could see Flash support and Adobe’s de-facto dominance of the online video delivery market recede further.

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