Apple-Adobe Fight

Apple has decided to block Adobe Flash so it will not be used in developing applications for iPad and iPhone applications. This decision has flared up a heated debate on the internet. As Adobe has confirmed its decision to move away from Apple products.

Steve Jobs, the Apple boss has written an open letter to support Apple’s decision to block Adobe Flash out of many of the firm’s devices. In the letter he particularly underlined that Flash was not fit for an era of smart-phones and touch-screen devices. The Apple boss added that Flash fell short on security and was “the number one reason Macs crash”.

The CTO (Chief Technology Officer), Kevin Lynch in Adobe commented,

“We feel confident that were Apple and Adobe to work together as we are with a number of other partners, we could provide a terrific experience with Flash on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.”

While the CEO of Adobe, Shantanu Narayen has accused Apple and Apple boss Steve Jobs of hypocrisy. He claims that if the Apple operating system was crashing with the use of Flash then the error points to the Apple OS and not the other way around. Mr. Narayen was quick to add that the problems highlighted by Mr Jobs were “a smokescreen”.

Following this fall out with Apple now Adobe has decided to shift its focus to to get Flash working well on gadgets made by Google, RIM, Palm, Microsoft, Nokia and others.

Google had implied that the words “Music” and “Lyrics” were among the top 10 searched words on the internet. To capitalize on this awesome market and defeat Apple’s monopoly which currently dominates the online music market with around 70% of worldwide sales, Google has released it’s on music service – OneBox.

However, it will be a US only service. OneBox allow people to search using song titles, artists or using snippets of lyrics and will also stream sought-after tracks. OneBox is basically an amalgamation of currently existing music services – Lala and iLike (Myspace).

OneBox can actually be considered as a compelling alternative to illegal file sharing on websites such as BitTorrent.

Advantages of OneBox

• When a song is searched on OneBox, a pop-up widget powered by iLike or Lala offers to play the entire song.
• Buy MP3s of the tracks and also highlights music videos
• Information, such as upcoming concerts by the artists.

Other ideas similar to Google’s OneBox is Spotify launched in Europe. Spotify has already gained popularity. It was launched in 2008.

Nokia is seeking 1-2% of royalty income for each i-Phone that Apple has sold. The Finnish giants Nokia have accused Apple of “trying to get a free ride on the back of Nokia’s innovation“.

With the percent of royalty income they seek, Nokia could be getting $6 to $12 per phone sold. With more than 30 million phones already sold, the grand total Nokia would reap out of this would be close to $400 million. Which, by the way, is a minuscule portion of the profit Apple Pie.  Apple has reported profits going upto $1.67bn in the last quarter, exceeding many analysts expectations.

Nokia has filed a law suit against Apple for infringing patents without royalties. The 10 alleged patent infringements, which apply to all models of the iPhone, involving features such as wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption.