Avi Greengart is the Research Director for Consumer Devices at Current Analysis (Mobile Phones, Connected Devices, and Digital Home). He also regularly writes for Slashgear, sporadically blogs at Home Theater View and Tweets far too often as @greengart. Avi's expertise lies in understanding consumer electronics marketing, consumer behavior, and technology adoption patterns: where new technologies meet the mass market. 

 

 

back to 1Q 2010

April 2010

4/29/10

My latest Slashgear column: Microsoft's KIN and the Emergence of Tiered Featurephone Data Plans

Thoughts on Apple vs. Adobe:

With today’s six point letter from Steve Jobs it is abundantly clear – if it had not already been – that Apple will not be supporting Flash on any of its mobile products. Apple believes that it has established enough momentum with apps to mitigate the loss of Flash content and games, and that its stand will speed the transition to HTML5 – a standard that Adobe supports as well. There is still enough Flash-only content on the web that full mobile Flash support could be a short term competitive differentiator against the iPhone. However, mobile Flash 10.1 has been repeatedly delayed, so it is a moot point until it actually ships. By that time, the gap may have been closed further.  

Flash support on Windows-based netbooks and tablets is another story; there it is just one of several huge differences between Apple’s vision of tablets and rivals’. Due to problems with user interface and use case, Windows-based tablets have not sold well beyond vertical markets and Flash alone is not enough to make this product category compelling. In contrast, netbooks have sold extremely well because they are essentially cheap portable notebooks. Flash is just one of many selling points that include a user accessible file storage system, USB ports, the ability to print, and a physical keyboard. For now, the iPad and netbooks are completely different classes of products.

 

4/13/10

Wow, that was a long time between updates. Mobile World Congress, CTIA, Passover, iPad launch, Passover... I need to get this site off of FrontPage and onto an easier to edit/maintain blogging platform...