Flash Will Be Replaced by a Native Video Capability in Opera

The Opera Software officials confirmed that the Adobe Flash plug-in for the mobile browser will be replaced by a native video capability. Therefore, the users will be able to use video, text and javascript and "directly execute video inside of the Web" as Tatsuki Tomita, senior vice-president for consumer products at Opera Software, said, as cited by InfoWorld.

Tomita mentioned that this change is justified by the desire to increase the functionality of mobile Web browsers and the Flash plug-in was not exactly suited for this new objective, as it is considered to be processor and memory intensive. Therefore, the user's experience is seen by Tomita not as good as it should be. It is also considered that a native application shall require less battery life than Flash does.

Another potential result of a move away from Flash could also be the lower costs, as Flash is said to be a quite expensive authoring tool. An example for this is the move that has been made a few years ago when the SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) was deployed by the cell phone industry.

Tomita has also mentioned that he considers the Apple iPhone included in a long-term trend that will end in the replacement of the classical operating systems on mobile phones by powerful browsers. Apple has already developed an application on the Web, although it's yet unavailable.

He stated that, despite the fact that nowadays there are limitations to the applications that are built on a Web browser, those can be surpassed and the browser will gain more functionality. Especially if the browsers will be taken more frequently into consideration by the individual handset manufacturers. Giving control over the hardware and middleware capabilities directly and natively to the browser would be the next step in this direction.

Yet Tomita hasn't stated a clear date for when the Opera browser will no longer need the technology now provided through the Flash plug-in and will replace it with its own.