AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

Adobe, Apple Hit Flash Point - The Wall Street Journal

Relationship Strained by iPhone’s Incompatibility

Apple Inc. and longtime partner Adobe Systems Inc. are at a flash point over the iPhone.

Since its debut in June, the iPhone’s mobile Web browser has been off-limits to nearly all videos delivered over the Internet. That is because the browser isn’t compatible with Flash Player, an Adobe-made media player used to view Internet videos.

Videos for the iPhone have to be specially formatted to a file type that Apple endorses. Google Inc.’s YouTube is the only video provider now doing this, and only a handful of videos are available.

Adobe’s patience appears to be wearing thin. “No one aside from [Apple Chief Executive] Steve Jobs has any idea if or when it’s coming,” Ryan Stewart, Adobe’s chief spokesman for its Internet-based applications, wrote on his blog last week. “Everyone I talk to doesn’t know anything.”

The iPhone’s history is already marked by Apple’s demands scaring off would-be partners, including Verizon Wireless, jointly owned by Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC, and China Mobile Ltd. Now it appears the same tactics are straining Apple’s relationship with Adobe.

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