Go back and read it again.

You made an incorrect claim that Apple was using its market dominance to dictate the rules. Apple is not in a dominant position in any market other than MP3 players. You made a claim about 200,000 apps, as if that cemented their "dominant" position in the market place. They may have a solid position in Apple apps, but Blackberry has a solid position in Blackberry apps, and Android has a solid position in Android apps. So whats your point?

Are you serious? Apple dominates the smartphone market, the mobile app market and the mobile browser market.

In the mobile App market, Blackberry means ZIP. Android is getting there slowly, but ask any mobile developer, and they'll tell you that the money is with Apple.

I suspect that more apps are submitted to the Apple App store on a day than yearly for Blackberry. Of course Apple dominates - they deserve credit for that.

Apple has stated its position. The market will decide if that position is valid or not.

If Flash is good and dare we say it - necessary, then demand for Flash apps will not only continue, but it will increase. Apple will be left behind with legions of users who can't use something. People will gradually shift to Android or whatever so they can use Flash. Apple will be the one who is hurt the most.

If Flash is dying, then Apple will be able to say "told ya so" and we all move on.

I don't really see a problem with this.

I agree. This just isn't possible.

But most people don't actually know that Flash is causing them problems. When IE crashes or hangs, they blame IE. In my experience, Flash caused the majority of my IE problems. Unfortunately, so much content on the web depends on Flash that I had to install it on my home PC. I think the longest I've made it is like 6 months without having it installed :)

Yep. It's possible. There is only one app that ever makes my browser crash, and dubiously for Adobe in this case it happens to come from them - Acrobat. Other than some problems from closing tabs that had acrobat viewers in them, I can't recall the last time I had Firefox crash. Probably years ago.

Edited to add: I should put some information in here for the sake of transparency. I use the NoScript extension for Firefox. I'm anal retentive about not running scripts from untrusted sources. Plenty of sites like YouTube and Hulu are added in there as trusted sources and I use Flash with them all the time, but I don't trust any of the ad providers. I consider some level of script blocking the equivalent of online due diligence.

NoScript is a must have add-on to surf the web. Flash sucks.

Are YOU serious?

Nokia has 39% of the smartphone market
RIM has 21% of the smartphone market
Apple has 17% of the smartphone market

Who dominates this market? I'll give you a hint, it's not the #3 company.

http://www.tipb.com/2009/11/12/analy...e-marketshare/


Even if you restrict yourself to the US Market, RIM has 40%, Apple has 30%. Again, not a dominant position.

http://www.tipb.com/2009/10/28/iphon...-satisfaction/


Could this all change? Could Apple take the #1 spot in the domestic and worldwide markets? Absolutely, and maybe they will, but it won't come from using their "dominant" position to manipulate the markets. It will be from selling a product that more people like to use and want to spend their money on. Whether it is the "best product" is a personal opinion that can't really be argued. Some people love a Yugo, some love a Lexus, and neither will agree the other is right.

I think planemechanic is confusing the phone market with the mobile app market.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/20...es-in-2009.ars

I agree, I don't use many 3rd party apps on my 'Berry but I even know that there are way more apps for Apple than 'Berry or 'Droid.

Nope, I think you are confusing a closed market with the greater market, and dismissing the fact that things have changed quite a bit since your link was posted. Apple may have 99.4% of a market in which they only have 17% of the actual handsets in use, but that does not make them dominant in the phone market.

Great. Because my whole point throughout this entire thread has been the mobile app market, regardless of how many handsets they have in use.

And how exactly are mobile apps used? Is there some other device, other than handsets, that mobile apps are used on? I think you are splitting hairs while losing the argument. You are trying to make a point without a purpose.

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

But surely, unless Apple licenses it's OS and App Store to other manufacturers (unlikely!), it wields its influence through the handset share of the market?!

It's share of the app market is very much secondary and for the purposes of this thread, irrelevant, as Flash is as much, if not more, a browser issue than an app issue.

Just to re-iterate, the point you're making is that in terms of Apple seeking to use it's influence to trash Flash, it's share of the app market is more relevant than it's share of the smartphone handset market. That really doesn't stand up.