Apple can't kill Flash without making a sacrifice of its own
With all the chatter about Apple wanting to kill Flash, can Flash survive, HTML 5 FTW, etc., I think there is one major, major problem people need to be aware of: HTML 5’s video element can never replace Flash as a video player, unless somebody sorts out the messy legal issues surrounding video codecs.
Place your face in your palm, and repeat after me: In order to support the video element, browser vendors would need to pay a licensing fee to include support for an MPEG- or H.264-based codec in their browser. Apple’s perfectly fine with that, but Mozilla, for example, is not. There is an open-source codec, Ogg Theora, that HTML 5’s authors originally intended to use, but guess which major company is against the use of Ogg Theora? Maybe a company with a major online music business invested in AAC and H.264? Oh, right, that would be Apple!
Since Apple is the company demanding to implement HTML 5’s video element with proprietary codecs, Apple is effectively the company prolonging Flash’s lifespan as a video player. If Apple really wanted to kill Flash, they’d add support for Ogg to Safari and iTunes. However, a company like Apple doesn’t resist a technology like this so vehemently without solid business reasons, so I really don’t think it will happen.