It may seem that Steve Jobs is on a lonely crusade against Adobe’s Flash format with the rest of the industry simply waiting who this battle will turn out. While Adobe is rallying support for Flash, Apple receives support from a rather unexpected ally, the adult film industry. The founder of Digital Playground, one of the porn heavyweights in the U.S., told ConceivablyTech that it will abandon Flash as soon as the desktop browsers fully support HTML 5. We also learned that 3D is just not there yet and that online movie streaming is unlikely to replace Blu-ray discs anytime soon.
Is Flash dead yet?
If you ask Apple, Flash is not worth the effort anymore. If you ask Nvidia, Flash is still a huge business opportunity. And Google might agree (or not. I will get to that a bit further down.) Who is right?
Critics of Flash typically claim that Adobe’s technology comes with plenty of bugs and a huge overhead that takes a toll on hardware performance, which is especially painful in devices with limited processing horsepower. I have always been careful with those claims as Adobe may be able to fix Flash problems and it clearly sees enough pressure to make Flash a much better platform that can survive.
“Survive” may be a strong word, but if you think about it, the current debate has turned into a format war. We have HTML 5, which is generally praised as the next major evolutionary step for HTML that automatically questions the future of Flash. Conceivably, Flash could co-exist next to HTML 5, but if we look at the possibilities that are provided by HTML 5, it is entirely possible that Flash will be obsolete in the not distant future. It is what Steve Jobs said. Flash was great, but it’s really on its way out and it’s time to look for, in Jobs’ words, the next horse to ride.
It is a no-brainer to predict that Flash will live and die with content. If Adobe can provide compelling reasons for developers to build Flash apps, Flash may stay with us for a long time. But if Apple is able to ignite a format war that turns into an either-or decision for developers (no developer will voluntarily develop for more platforms than absolutely necessary), which is the format that is likely to win?
The adult film industry was able to influence and help win format wars in the past. It was the critical factor when VHS won over Beta and it is an open secret that Blu-ray also gained an advantage over HD-DVD because of porn – as the Playstation 3 indirectly promoted sales of high-res adult movies in much greater volumes than the HD DVD. All major adult film studios in the U.S. stopped producing HD DVDs more than three months before Toshiba announced that it would halt the format. There is a good chance that the adult film industry will have a say in the HTML 5-Flash battle as well. While the industry suffers because of the emergence of tube-websites, it is still estimated that the industry rakes in a combined $13 billion in online revenues every year. Porn remains very popular. According to Alexa.com, among the 100 most popular websites in the U.S., seven are porn-related. International estimates claim that roughly 12% of all websites carry pornographic content.
It was a natural thought to ask Ali Joone, founder and director of Digital Playground (DP), one of the leading adult film studios in the U.S. for his thoughts on the format debate. Not surprisingly, while many of us are still trying to figure out which way we should go, Joone has already a clear direction for his company: “HTML 5 is the future,” he said. For Joone, it is a simple matter of exposure why HTML 5 will win over Flash.
More than two years ago, he began offering content for the iPhone. Since Apple does not allow pornographic content in its App Store and since Safari does not run Flash, DP began taking the HTML 5 route. DP’s HTML 5 streams for mobile devices have been available for more than a year now. Joone said that he is following the Flash integration in Android, but he indicated that it is rather irrelevant to him whether Android will support Flash or not: “Mobile browsers run HTML 5 very well. Flash brings everything to a crawl and has an impact on battery life. With HTML 5, there is no reason to show our content in Flash.”
DP is still publishing content in Flash online, since desktop browsers, especially IE8, aren’t ready for HTML 5 yet. “We are waiting for browsers to catch up. As soon as they are ready, we will move everything to HTML 5,” Joone said. He noted that he was grateful for what Flash has delivered, but said that it was “just a matter of time” until Flash disappears. “It’s the next passing of the torch.”
Joone’s thoughts add more and possibly unbiased perspective to the Flash-HTML 5 discussion. It would be foolish to underestimate the influence of the adult film industry and I wonder how Adobe will react to this trend.
And interesting side aspect is, by the way, Google.
Google has voiced its support for Flash, even if it has remained unclear whether there was a business reason behind that decision or whether Eric Schmidt simply wants to annoy Steve Jobs. However, it is a fact that Google Chrome has become a bulky browser due to the integration of Flash (and Adobe PDF in its latest Chrome developer version) and this may be a very high price to pay for the benefit to be able to patch Flash security issues with universal Chrome updates. Perhaps too high.
Adobe should not feel too comfortable about Google’s opinion on Flash, as the company is already enthusiastically promoting HTML 5 to developers and its YouTube division an HTML 5 player already out in the market.
Read on the next page: iPhone personal space; Cautious about 3D; Online video distribution will not replace Blu-ray
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