Motorola's Xoom and Apple's iPad might soon become blood enemies, but these two nemeses have more in common than you might think. Heralded as the iPad's first true Android competitor, the Honeycomb-based Xoom will join its Apple cousin in not supporting Adobe's Flash upon its release.
The critical difference there being that while Apple's iPad and iPhone lines are expected to remain Flash-free for the foreseeable future, Motorola has gone on record as promising Flash at some point in spring of 2011. Presumably, Motorola is waiting for the release of Flash 10.2 for Mobile—a rumored Honeycomb-only update (Android 3.0) that's expected to deliver stronger video quality and frame rates using less processing power and memory.
Although new Xoom owners won't have Flash on their tablets, nor have any way to download Flash via the Android Market, the news shouldn't put a dent in Adobe's market adoption. According to the company's latest figures from the 2011 Mobile World Congress, more than 20 million smartphones have shipped with (or been upgraded to) its Flash Player 10.1 software. Adobe expects its total mobile Flash adoption to hit 132 million units worldwide by the end of 2011, and the company estimates that 50 tablets will feature Flash pre-installed (or available for download) by the end of the year as well.
That said, the Flash versus HTML5 debate for digital content creation continues on. We're all familiar with Steve Jobs' missive against Adobe's "proprietary product," as described by Jobs in an April 2010 letter. Since then, Silicon Valley's other big players have started to incorporate HTML5 as a replacement—or, at least, an alternative—to previous Flash-only content. Take Google and its introduction of an HTML5 player within YouTube, for example.
According to October 2010 statistics from MeFeedia, 54 percent of all Web video was recorded as being playable in HTML5 at the time. While "only half" might not sound quite that impressive, it's a huge upswing compared to the 10 percent of Web video the company recorded as playable in HTML5 in January of 2010.
But it's not just video that's leading the HTML5 charge. Facebook, as well, is another Silicon Valley giant that's started to open its eyes toward HTML5-based content—for games.
With wide adoption and industry support, HTML5 will transform desktop and mobile gaming, creating amazing user experiences that are only a link away," wrote Cory Ondrejka, former CTO of Linden Labs, in a January 2011 blog post. "Already, over 125 million people visit Facebook using HTML5 capable browsers just from their mobile phone, and that number skyrockets when we add in desktop browsers. The future is clear."