See this is the problem with statements like this. People get out their crystal balls (
or in some cases Magic 8 balls) and try to predict the future. Problem is you cant do that when it comes to the Internet. Its environment is ever evolving and has many tentacles like an octopus. Any one tentacle can change the outcome of the others. First, H.264 is
not the only game in town. Many of the big boys are looking at other options like Ogg Theora, which, you guessed it,
is free! Another big plus is that Theora is much less CPU intensive than decoding H.264, which means your battery will last much longer. But Theora is not (
yet) perfect. That however, may not mean much in the end. H264 is technically superior to Theora, but not by so much that it makes any difference. Its more like H264 is Blu-ray quality and Theora is DVD quality. Not bad, but not great either.
Just stroll over to a site like You Tube and youll quickly see that users largely don't care about video quality, or for that matter sound quality. Theora is more than good enough for the vast majority of users. The only real big difference between the two formats is the licensing terms, and I dont see people wanting to pull out their credit cards just to watch a simple video. This is Theoras ace in the hole, its 100% free, and people like free, which is why I think H264 is a non-issue for right now. In the end I think freedom will prevail on the net, and in the mean time Theora continues to improve. Firefox and Opera
already support Theora. But wait, the plot thickens.... Google has now introduced their codec called
WebM, and it too is
completely free. As you might imagine this puts a LOT of gooey pressure on H264 to stay free. Theora, WebM, and H264 are all good for HTML5. Bad for flash. As I.E. loses more and more market share everyday, Firefox and Safari continue to grow and gain market share, and once they have a majority, perhaps with a dash of support from googles Chrome, then Ogg Theora or WebM may just be too hard for the rest of the industry to ignore. The Apple
canvas tag has also been widely accepted and is already adopted in HTML5 and version 1.8 of Gecko and Opera browsers. Graphs, animations, and games are all well on their way in HTML5
There are many reasons why flash is on its way out, not the least of which is that it is a CPU hog, which means that mobile devices get their batteries drained with flash quicker than you can say Android. Mikedt alluded to something earlier. Not all Andriod devices use flash. There is a big reason for that. When someone is looking for a new device to buy they usually check to see how long the battery will (
or wont) lasts. If there are a lot of complaints about poor battery performance, then people often times just pass that device up and look for something else. Manufactures know this. Flash will eat your battery for lunch, and sadly for many mobile devices thats no exaggeration. It can max out a modern CPU while playing a simple video. Thats not going to earn manufactures any praise for their shiny new device. However HTML5 will not eat abnormal amounts of battery power, so in the end the experience is much more pleasant for the user. Manufactures of Android mobile devices know this too
People like to complain that Apples iPad does not use Flash, but when you understand
everything then the real question is
why would you want to use flash? For most people it's just because of old habits, but the Internet is about
technology and moving
forward, and flash is yesterdays old news. Apple of course is also about technology, and that's why it left a bad taste in their mouth to allow the iPad to use it. You can imagine all the people who would have complained about bad battery performance on the iPad - when the truth would have been that Flash was the culpret sucking the battery dry, and not the design of the iPad itself. Apple was wise to stay away from flash, and so are the Android manufacture that don't include it. As I mentioned in the beginning the Internets environment is ever evolving and has many tentacles like an octopus. Any one of those tentacles can change the outcome of the others. However one thing is clear, as flash withers away on the vine, HTML5 grows stronger and stronger. That's good for all of us who like to play on the Net
Adobe tried to fix flash for mobile devices. Adobe failed. Adobe was smart in giving up on flash and now it's time to move forward so that mobile devices can shoot for the stars. Back when flash got its start people were still watching Braveheart. Even though Adobe inherited flash, no one knows what flash can, and cannot do better than Adobe, and here is what they say on the topic; "On mobile devices HTML5 provides a similar level of ubiquity that the Flash Player provides on the desktop. It is the best technology for creating and deploying rich content to the browser across mobile platforms," 