At the Web 2.0 Expo in New York later this month, Complex Spiral Consulting founder Eric Meyer plans to discuss the potential for HTML5 to become the “Flash killer” that Apple and others believe it to be.
Admittedly, determining whether or not HTML5 has what it takes to beat Flash can be difficult. As Adobe Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: ADBE) has pointed out time and again over the past year, 75 percent of the Web’s video and 70 percent of online games run on Flash.
However, HTML5 is coming on strong. Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)
announced earlier this year that it would try out HTML5 on YouTube. Currently, users can opt-in to its HTML5 player and view videos with the technology. That doesn’t necessarily mean that HTML5 will supplant Flash as the go-to platform on the site. But it’s possible that Google, which, according to comScore, served over 1.8 billion video viewing sessions in July 2010, could be the linchpin that sets HTML5 onto the path of success.
Google isn’t alone in its support for HTML5. Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) has made it known that until it’s absolutely forced by its customers to switch to Flash, it will not support the technology on its iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad.
“Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access ‘the full Web’ because 75% of video on the Web is in Flash,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrote on his company’s Website back in April. “What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods, and iPads.
“YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the Web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices,” he continued.
Jobs went on to point out that his decision to ditch Flash in favor of HTML5 was based in his concern over “reliability, security, and performance” when allowing Flash to run on a mobile platform.
“The mobile era is about low-power devices, touch interfaces, and open Web standards -- all areas where Flash falls short,” Jobs said.
Beyond video, HTML5 holds promise in the cloud. Unlike Flash, which requires a plug-in, HTML5 is an open Web standard. That alone should help developers create richer applications that can run on several platforms, rather than be required to make native apps for various operating systems.
In a recent interview with ZDNet UK, Tariq Krim, co-founder of Web dashboard application supplier Netvibes, which has also built a netbook-based operating system called Jolicloud, made it clear where he stands.
“HTML5 is the future of interfaces,” he said.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that Adobe’s Flash is on its way out. Flash is still widely used across the Internet, and some observers believe
HTML5 is in its infancy, making it a poor candidate to replace Flash anytime soon.
“Will HTML5 make rich Internet application technologies such as Adobe Flash/Flex and Microsoft Silverlight obsolete?” asked analyst Jeffrey Hammond in a report earlier this year. “For at least the next five years, the answer is a definite ‘no.’
“Inconsistent implementations of the draft HTML5 specification and immature tooling make building HTML5 apps that work consistently across browsers and operating systems a real challenge.”
And then there is the issue of Android OS. Although Apple doesn’t see value in Flash, Google does. Every smartphone running Android 2.2 also runs Flash 10.1. Depending on how that goes, and how consumers respond to that functionality, mobile customers could require that Flash be made available on every platform. At that point, Apple would have no choice but to bring Flash to iOS.
It’s difficult to handicap the race between HTML5 and Flash for Web domination. HTML5 certainly has some big names behind it, but Flash is the incumbent that has erected barriers to entry that the new alternative might not easily overcome. If anything is certain, it’s that this battle won’t be determined within the next few years.
— Don Reisinger is a technology and video game columnist.
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