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Comment by pavs | Hacker News Reader

How about the fact that Flash (besides having performance issues) would more or less end the reason of having an app store and apple's one large source of revenue?

Do you think if iphone had flash, developers would go through the trouble of app betting process by apple? Every streaming music service, video service and flash games and applications would make Appstore irrelevant.

That, in my opinion, is the single biggest reason why we will _never_ see flash support in iphone of ipad no matter how fast and secure flash becomes in the near future.

Not that I care about flash in mobile device. But, using performance as the main reason for not supporting flash is silly. It can be one of the several reasons, but definitely not the main reason.

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Apple's three large sources of revenue are selling Macs, selling iPods, and selling iPhones. Everything else--from music to TV shows to movies to iPhone apps--is a complementary product rather than a major revenue driver for Apple.

There was an interesting blog post about Apple shifting to make the app store more of a razor blade model, especially with the iPad coming soon.

http://www.marketspacetrading.com/the-latest/video-apples-st...

"Even in these economically challenging times, we are incredibly pleased to report our best quarterly revenue and earnings in Apple history -- surpassing $10 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time ever."

"The company said strong music and video sales drove a record quarter for its iTunes Store. ITunes brought in its highest sales ever on Christmas Day and Christmas week." (Jan 2009)

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117998905.html?categoryId=...

"iTunes and App Store are still running a bit over break-even." — Peter Oppenheimer (Apple CFO)

(via http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/25/apple-q1-2010-results/ )

For a company whose main product lines throw off massive amounts of cash "a bit over break-even" is SEC-speak for "loss leader." If they ran for too long as money-losers then Apple would be more vulnerable to predatory pricing attacks based on the closed nature of both products, as long as they barely make money then Apple has better protection.

Flash on the iPhone wouldn't end the App Store. Flash developers would still release in the App Store because it is easier to make money in the App Store than over the mobile web.

I don't get this argument. If Flash would draw developers away from Cocoa Touch and the App Store, why wouldn't HTML5? Apple's pushing HTML5.

Further, if your server is set up to deliver streaming music or video in a standard format, you can already use HTML5 to deliver that instead of the App Store. It's easier, since you don't have to go through the approval process. The App Store just carries a better chance of visibility and a much easier way of monetizing.

Because, unfortunately, HTML5 != Flash. There's more to Flash than proprietary versions of <canvas> and <video>.

On second thought, that is a valid question: Why exactly is Apple pushing HTML5? I can't really think of any reason in which it benefits Apple.

Apple already invested a lot into Webkit. So it probably makes sense for them to push HTML5.

It benefits Apple greatly to have their core technology as one of the driving forces of the open web.

And now they've pretty much won the mobile browser war (WebKit is in Android, iPhone OS and coming to RIM's OS), the "war" seems to be over.

I think the app store would still be a big thing because it would still be the easiest distribution channel. Even if there was good flash support, there would still be the issue of developers trying to extract revenue from there apps. The app stores give people easy access and instills a quick impulse buy mentality which would be hard for someone developing for the iphone independent of the app store to achieve.

Performance for some graphics intensive apps I'd imagine would never be as good just because no matter how efficient flash becomes it would still be an extra layer things are being ran on.

App store would still be a relevant thing _now_ if apple were to allow flash. Simply because users have been accustomed to the concept of app store. An iphone without an app store wouldn't make sense.

But, if iphone had flash the first time it was released, I honestly believe it would make app store irrelevant or at the very least it would make some serious dent in to app store revenue.

I agree to a great extent ... but I don't think we're living in that world. I just don't see Adobe getting its software development act together; for the vast majority of companies this sort of thing just gets worse and worse ... interestingly, Microsoft has shown ability to reverse that with Vista -> Windows 7.

So if I were Apple/Jobs I won't even consider changing the policy until they showed some basic competence and dedication to getting things right for a long enough time.

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