Virgin won't Flash

Standards battles are often critical to competitive success; one of the key contests currently underway is over web standards for rich(er) content:

• Adobe's Flash - very widely used (YouTube, anyone), but not (famously) supported by Apple on the iPhone, and perceived by many as a major source of security weakenesses


• HTML5 - being advocated by Google


• Silverlight - Microsoft's proprietary technology

In a recent assessment, we concluded that Flash was so widespread, and the standard-setting process so slow, that it would be a very very long time before HTML5 became the dominant standard.

An interesting recent development suggests, however, that a reassessment might be worthwhile - we're always alert for these 'triggers' or early indicators of how different demand and business ecosystem scenarios evolve:

Start-up airline Virgin America has decided HTML is "good enough" for animating online content on its brand-new website, which went live Monday, dumping Flash.

...

It illustrates the options customers have between picking the closed Flash - or Silverlight from Microsoft - and open technologies such as HTML to serve content to a new generation of mobile computing devices

Virgin picked HTML to give users of iPhones and other mobiles the option in the future of checking in through their phone. The battle between Adobe and Apple has seen Flash deliberately excluded from the Jesus Phone.

Simhambhatla: iPhone, and other mobile, users welcome

Later, it highlights the value of Flash when you control the hardware:

Flash provides beautiful interactivity," Simhambhatla said. "We wanted to bring a smoother application experience and modularity and be able to build up an interactive experience for the kiosk user - Flash is all these.

"Flash is really, really good, but as long as you can keep the hardware controlled...If the hardware you are trying to put your product on isn't [controlled] then Flash is questionable."

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