I have written in the past about mobile devices, and now we have the launch of what the Apple faithfull believe to be the ultimate mobile device – the iPad.
This is a very cool device by all accounts, and it could be a game changing device for the home digital experience… except for the cost and lack of Flash support in my view.
Game changing would be to have this device out there for the £199/€229 price point, not the expected £400/€450 price point.
The lack of Flash support has been the subject of a public press war between Apple and Adobe for the last few weeks. This battle has come to an end (for now) by the announcement from Adobe that they are suspending/ending the development of Flash 10.x for the Apple iDevices. I don’t personally see this as final but it does kill it for the current generation of devices.
What does this mean for the effect of iPad on the Home environment? Well it means Apple will be excluded for much of the inhome OTT video for the next couple of years, but does guarantee then the pick up in non flash video sources starting in mid-2011 after the maturing of HTML5 and H.264 video and the inevitable drop in price of the iPad to that magical price point. The further driver for that is the App store, which is feeding mainstream adoption, and it is a pity that Video will be bad for a while on the iDevices.
Until then it will be an expensive geek toy for early adopters.
What do you believe?
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