∞ Virgin America dumps Flash in favor of iPhone

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Apple’s spat with Adobe over Flash is not a big secret, but now other companies are choosing sides too. The latest is Virgin America.

Virgin is dumping its Flash Web site and will instead go with an HTML 5 site. Virgin Chief information officer (CTO), Ravi Simhambhatla, said on Thursday that the decision was made to give iPhone and other mobile users the ability to check flights on their phones.

“I don’t want to cater to one hardware or one software platform one way to another, and Flash eliminates iPhone users,” told The Register. “This year is going to be the year of the mobile [for Virgin].”

Simhambhatla said that they weren’t using many of Flash’s features — in fact, they were only using a transition, but it was putting a 40 percent CPU load on users computers.

Steve Jobs’ views on Flash have been well documented in recent weeks. He’s said “We don’t spend a lot of energy on old technology,” when speaking with the Wall Street Journal. He also called Flash a “CPU hog,” and a source of “security holes.”


  • http://canadiantechblogger.com Brad

    Got to give it to Virgin on this one.

    HTML 5 is much better for users instead of flash.

    Flash like .PDF is full of holes and is getting old fast.

    It's about time we have some standards and some alternatives!

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/jdalrymple Jim Dalrymple

      It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. Will more companies follow Virgin?

      • http://canadiantechblogger.com Brad

        Youtube/Vimeo half support HTML5. Firefox however is not supported because HTML5 has issues of its own (ogg vs MPEG). Firefox will not license MPEG.

  • Constable Odo

    Virgin will be followed by many other major sites. It will prove that Flash is not necessary in order for advertisers to reach consumers. Any smart advertiser will not ignore the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad platform. It won't matter whether HTML5 isn't up to the programming ability of Flash. All that Flash stuff is just a drag on mobile user's devices and their bandwidth. The entire mobile world is headed toward multitouch and Flash is useless for that.

  • Joe

    It's already happening. Flash is dead – it just doesn't know it yet.

  • Nanpon Gambo

    Its a pity Adobe was comfortable with the present status of flash instead of them to improve on its interface. Jobs is right on this one (like always), flash uses unnecessary bandwidth. ‘cos of lack of flash on iphones, it makes it faster and more user friendly…guess other companies sites will foloow.