Apple recently announced their iPad which does not include Adobe Flash player, which is a bold move considering it will negatively impact consumer’s web browsing experience. Steve Jobs himself demoed the New York Times website with blank boxes that normally render flash content.

This move along with continued non-support of Flash on mobile devices will certainly affect organization’s usage of Flash on public facing websites, which will ultimately impact the adoption of future Flash Player releases if this continues long enough.

Adobe’s poor attention to long lasting security and performance concerns and lack of foresight to step up mobile Flash Player development has put them in catch up mode. As someone who uses Flash-based content every day, I think some of the performance concerns are over-stated since I know that a properly designed application does provide acceptable performance on a desktop PC. I am not actively testing Flash Player 10.1, but I hope all hands are on deck to calm the growing concerns about the future of Flash.

Flash technology is deeply engrained within many web-based applications by a devoted development and creative community who develop content. As these software giants continue to take swipes at each other to gain market share and appease market analysts, sometimes they leave a mess in their wake. At the end of the day innovation and competition ultimately benefit consumers, so I look forward to seeing where this goes!

I would love to hear insight from others who have been following this saga…