Apple will soon be under pressure to include Adobe Flash on its products as more companies include support for the technology on its smartphones says a new research report.
According to data from Ovum’s Smartphone Capability Analyzer Update 3Q10, the first six devices which support Flash 10.1 arrived in Q3 and the analyst expects this number to grow rapidly in the future. The analyzer provides a quantitative view of smartphones and their capabilities, with the aim of highlighting the evolving capabilities of phones in the fast-moving smartphone market.
Android 2.2 was the first platform to support Flash 10.1 and Blackberry, Windows Phone, Symbian, MeeGo and WebOS have all already announced that they plan to support it in the future.
Ovum analyst, Nick Dillon said, “With support for Flash 10.1 growing, users will become accustomed to a similar web browsing experience on both mobile and desktop devices; this will ultimately impact the attractiveness of Apple’s proposition.”
“Flash certainly looks to be gaining ground with device vendors and Apple may need to re-evaluate its position if its dominance is threatened as a result,” continued Dillon.
“In addition to garnering support for Flash 10, Adobe has launched its own app distribution service for Flash and AIR applications. InMarket will help developers to sell their apps across various devices. This is clearly a big draw for developers and will threaten the dominance of platform vendors in the mobile apps market,” concluded Dillon.
