What if Adobe Flash already works on the upcoming iPhone 4G and Apple/Adobe are making a big move by building suspense? Could they be sandbagging the market?
While I can’t find it, a while back Steve Blank wrote a blog post about sandbagging the competition. The company he worked for developed chips that completely killed the competition; yet, to extend the product’s selling life and increase unit sales, they only published modestly superior (not overwhelming) performance statistics; when in fact, it blew the competitors away.
For Apple/Adobe, let’s run it down:
- HTML5 is coming - but it will be a while before entire websites convert. (I suspect it will be another career decision for lots of HTML developers. As I was doing less development, I really had to do some thinking about taking on CSS.)
- There are tons of existing flash apps in games and web pages.
- There are lots of Flash developers.
Now, looking at the benefits from a joint Apple/Adobe’s POV:
- It is very hard to port to different platforms. OS/Graphics/Battery Performance, security, OS, installation, support, are only a few of the considerations. It takes time and lots of resources. Doable but difficult.
- A Flash port to iPhone/iPad represents a second hockey stick and new life for the iPhone. 4G provides increased throughput and access but it’s the features that users want.
- Adobe Air might represent yet another hockey stick.
- If you’re secure in your market, making your competitors think you’re faltering or have challenges is a great strategy even if it temporarily reduces your market share.
Would it be bad form for Apple and Adobe to mislead both their customers and shareholders? Unethical? Would Apple’s shareholders forgive them? I bet they would. Hell, I bet they would love it! I don’t think Apple doesn’t have anything to worry about. There’s no doubt that Adobe would benefit.
Of course, we’ll have to see what happens when the 4G comes out. I have to assume that Apple will release the 4G version just about the same time they release iPad v2 - so both platform sales and Flash developers would benefit. Time will tell!
(On a separate note, why hasn’t Apple purchased Adobe? They’ve had a symbiotic relationship for years.
