Maybe Flash Video Ain’t What it Used to Be?

A lot has been said, raged, and ranted about the iPhone and iPad‘s incompatibility with Flash.  On Friday, the movement away from Flash grew significantly larger when Microsoft announced that Internet Explorer 9 will also leave Flash video by the wayside.  While Microsoft’s Dean Hachamovitch cited Flash’s problems with reliability, security, and performance, Steve Jobs took a more militant approach: statistics.

Of the 75% of internet video that is in Flash, he said “almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads.”

Well, you know what Mark Twain would say.  So how much truth is there to Jobs’ numbers?  Techcrunch has done some digging.

As it turns out, Flash isn’t doing so well.

In the past four quarters, the H.264 format went from 31 percent of all videos to 66 percent, and is now the largest format by far. Meanwhile, Flash is represented by Flash VP6 and FLV, which combined represent only 26 percent of all videos. That is down from a combined total of 69 percent four quarters ago. So the native Flash codecs and H.264 have completely flipped in terms of market share.

Techmeme also points out that all Youtube videos (40% of the video on the internet) are available in H.264.  See their article here for a handy chart, too.

(via Techmeme.)