Accel’s Rich Wong: Flash isn’t relevant in mobile

Updated

There’s been a lot of debate over whether Adobe’s Flash and AIR technologies, which power many videos and games on the web, are going to be significant on smartphones and upcoming devices like Apple’s iPad. Accel Partners’ Rich Wong, who specializes in mobile startups, weighed in on the debate today at a developer event hosted by mobile advertising startup AdMob.

“I don’t think Flash plays a relevant role,” Wong said. “Flash missed its window.”

Adobe pursued the wrong strategy by building a stripped-down version of Flash called Flash Lite, Wong said. Meanwhile, the iPhone has built a thriving app ecosystem without supporting Flash, and it won’t be supporting Flash on the iPad either. I’ve heard something similar — many of the startups that I interview that have built their websites in Flash are thinking about building versions using HTML5, which will work on the iPhone and the iPad.

On the other hand, Adobe has announced versions of Flash and AIR that will work on most major non-Apple platforms, and we’ve seen some cool AIR tablet apps, like Wired’s. So the battle isn’t over yet.

Update: Wong emailed me with more details about his position:

I don’t think Flash Lite becomes a dominant, ubiquitous platform layer in mobile as per its aspiration of 5+ years ago. Will Flash have a place in the overall ecosystem of mobile? YES. Will Flash Lite become a ubiquitous platform layer? NO.

In my opinion –- I think that window has passed. It did work in Japan in 2005 era but that is a very different mobile ecosystem in Japan. For one, iPhone of course is unlikely to integrate it which affects the ubiquity greatly. Take a read of a friend’s blog post who used to work at Macromedia in this area.