It has been a short while before the launch of the Apple iPhone 4 and already, we are seeing the first signs of Apple’s influence on the World Wide Web. As much as the tech industry respects and would want to live by the words that Adobe gave us: “the internet is not controlled by anyone”, it is hard to admit that Apple is at least, a very influential force.
With their latest handset easily selling over 1.7 million in just three days (and thus, we can only wonder how many have been sold by now), it is hard to say that Apple’s restrictions are not setting a new standard. Despite the fact that there are significantly more people using other smart phones with other operating system, the fact that even big companies are adapting to the new handset is astounding.
Take YouTube for example, now this is a famous web service that is technically owned by Google -a rival for Apple. They originally used Flash content for their site, but since Apple’s iPhone does not support Flash, YouTube has had to adapt HTML5 as the new format for its mobile site.
It may seem like a small victory for Apple, but it is significant. YouTube is a standard, the fact that Apple users once needed to have special apps means that the argument regarding the use of HTML5 as a new standard over Flash was hard to prove. But this goes against exactly that.
While it may seem illogical for Google to prove Apple correct about HTML5, they cannot afford to alienate over 1.7 million users from being able to tune into the largest depository of user generated video content on the internet.
In the meanwhile, both Google and Adobe have reported that they are working on their own development software and support for the HTML5 format.
