Adobe CEO: 'There's a War Happening for Developers'
At the Web 2.0 Summit this morning, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said his company's battle with Apple over the past year comes as a “war” is brewing between device and software manufacturers who want to bring new applications to consumer electronics devices.
Context & Ripple Effects
This fight has been building since April, when Apple's developer terms effectively barred Flash-built apps from the App Store — what Mike Chambers' Flash Blog called slapping developers in the face — and coverage warned the standoff would get uglier. Narayen's appearance at the Web 2.0 Summit is Adobe's countermove: recasting a bilateral spat as an industry-wide contest for developer allegiance.
The framing also arrives under pressure. Days earlier, Flash shipped on Samsung's Galaxy Tab and was described as performing like an embarrassing disaster, while Mac OS X 10.6.5 landed without incident — meaning Adobe is defending both Apple's ban and its own runtime quality when it talks about a war for developers.
First-order effects
- Narayen publicly positions Adobe as the developers' champion against platform gatekeepers, escalating rhetoric after months during which Apple's terms forced developers to abandon Flash-to-iPhone workflows.
- Adobe is fighting on two fronts simultaneously: Apple's App Store restrictions on one side, and widely reported poor Flash performance on Android hardware like Samsung's Galaxy Tab on the other.
Second-order effects
- Device manufacturers such as Samsung that bet on Flash-capable hardware now depend on Adobe fixing runtime quality; if the experience stays poor, their differentiation claim weakens and attention shifts toward HTML5 as the portable alternative.
- With Apple reportedly preparing iOS 4.2 (The Telegraph cites November 24, though unconfirmed), developers face maintaining parallel native and cross-platform codebases — raising their switching costs and deepening the camps Narayen describes.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, consumer electronics consolidates into walled gardens where the platform owner controls the toolchain and storefront, with the open web standards stack as the only neutral ground left for cross-device applications.
- Developer mindshare becomes the scarce strategic resource: platform vendors will increasingly compete on tools, revenue terms, and reach rather than device specs alone, since the application layer decides which hardware wins.
The trend: Mobile-era competition is shifting from device specifications to control of developer runtimes and distribution channels, with each platform vendor trying to lock in the application layer.