In Apple’s latest “What is iPad?” commercial, there’s a claim of “all the world’s Web sites in your hands.” Of course, that’s hardly true, despite the big push by some video content providers to switch from Adobe Flash — which Apple refuses to support on iPhones and iPads, and possibly soon on Macs — to HTML5’s H.264 format, which Apple does support. The fact is, it’s not true that you have “all the world’s Web sites” on the iPad because I daily get frustrated at all the free TV shows I can’t watch on my iPad while lounging on the couch.
So how much video online uses H.264? All Things Digital quotes MeFeedia, a video search engine, who say that H.264 makes up only about 26% of online video content. However, TechCrunch quoted Encoding.com, who claim a figure of 66%, and blinkx, who claim 67%.
Eiteher way, these figures put the lie to Apple’s claim, but several TV broadcasters are claiming to be converting their online video content to be iPad-enabled, and other content providers are likely to follow suit. There may only be about a million iPads sold to date, but there mid-double digit millions of iPhones out there, and if a Verizon iPhone does in fact come out, many more millions of iPhones might sell to the increased consumer base. In other words, HTML5/ H.264 video content is a trend that will continue.
