Claim Chowder: ‘Does Apple Have a Blind Spot About Flash?’

Fred Wilson, “A VC”, February 2009:

I believe Apple is making a mistake by snubbing Adobe’s desire to get Flash on the iPhone. And I believe Apple doesn’t share in Adobe and Nokia’s vision of an open and consistent experience for web browsing and mobile apps. It seems to me that Apple is interested in replicating its iTunes/iPod strategy it used to dominate digital music to dominate the mobile web.

I don’t think that will work. In fact, I don’t think the iTunes/iPod strategy has much life left in it. […]

I think we’ll have to deduct a Being Right point or two here.

I don’t even think an app ecosystem is the long term solution for the mobile web. It’s a bridge environment that allows for rich experiences on devices that don’t have reliable high bandwidth connections yet.

But the mobile web will eventually just be the web. And a big part of getting it there is to get the tools that allow us to seamlessly consume rich media on the web onto mobile devices. To me that means Flash.

Ouch. Ten-point deduction.

★ Thursday, 10 November 2011