Who needs Flash? Apple dominating mobile video

Apple‘s iOS has become the dominant platform for mobile video viewing, according to a new report from video monetization startup FreeWheel.

FreeWheel, which specializes in helping clients make money from their online videos and which records data on more than 10 billion different video views every quarter through its Monetization Rights Management product, says that Apple iOS accounted for 80% of its clients’ video views on mobile platforms. FreeWheel says that Apple’s large share of video views is divided fairly evenly between the iPhone (30% of mobile video views), the iPod Touch (30%) and the iPad(20%). Android was the only other operating system to make a dent in FreeWheel’s study, accounting for 20% of mobile video viewings that FreeWheel recorded. No other mobile operating system accounted for even 1% of mobile video views in FreeWheel’s report.

The company says that Apple has gained a significant advantage by being the first to come out with popular touchscreen smartphones and touchscreen tablets, thus forcing content developers to adjust their strategy to fit Apple’s platform.

“It … reflects the development priorities of content producers and distributors,” FreeWheel says in its report. “They optimized their content first for the Apple platforms, with Android a later priority.”

Apple’s dominance in the mobile video market has come despite the fact that its iOS still doesn’t support Adobe Flash, which is the most commonly used platform for delivering video on the Internet. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has claimed that Flash is a poorly designed program responsible for crashing Apple computers. Jobs has also said Flash is ill-equipped for mobile devices as it sucks up battery life and has security holes.

These factors have led Apple to restrict the use of third-party software tools by app developers, essentially banning the use of Flash for any developer who wants to publish an application on the company’s App Store. Instead, Apple has encouraged developers to write applications on open standards such as CSS, JavaScript and the HTML 5 standard that Jobs says “lets developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins.”