Adobe fuming in iPhone Flash stoush

Adobe bosses say Apple is depriving iPhone users of Flash content.

SAN FRANCISCO - Adobe Systems, which is trying to get its Flash software on to Apple devices, said the iPhone risks losing market share because it's the only smartphone that doesn't support Adobe's Flash video software.

More than 75 per cent of web video relies on Flash, depriving iPhone customers of that content, said Kevin Lynch, Adobe's chief technical officer. Apple's new iPad tablet computer, announced last week, also doesn't support Flash.

"People will start to see that as a capability they'd like to have and not understand why it's not there," Lynch said yesterday. "It will become a competitive differentiator in that market, in terms of being able to view Flash content and websites or not."

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs is promoting a standard called HTML5, rather than Flash, said James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research in Boston. HTML5 is the next version of the HTML language, which controls how web pages present information. Adobe said that standard wouldn't be able to replace Flash in showing web video and animation.

"It's clear that Apple doesn't want to strengthen Adobe's position in the market," McQuivey said. "Apple has been very public in supporting HTML5, and yet the vast majority of videos online are in Flash."

HTML5 won't work the same way in different browsers, preventing it from being an alternative to Flash, Lynch said.

Jobs said in March 2008 that Adobe's Flash software is too slow to be useful on the iPhone and a mobile version of Flash isn't powerful enough. At the time, he said he wanted Adobe to create a third version of Flash, with features that fall between the personal-computer edition and the mobile version.

- BLOOMBERG