Over the past few weeks the question has rung around my social circles as to which smart phone is the best and why? A colleague wanted to upgrade from her out dated Blackberry and posted the question on her FaceBook wall seeking advice. Samsung overwhelmingly won this particular battle, most of her friends advised her to go for Samsung galaxy or Note and a few of her friends stating they owned both the iPhone and the Samsung, yet they preferred the Samsung. So the question is where have Apple gone wrong? After all the whole concept of the touch screen smart phone filled with apps was theirs to begin with.

Well it seems fitting for me to write this article right now, since ICU Online has just gone through a major upgrade, and the question has kept coming up about viewer compatibility, the pro’s and cons. Our new network is designed to work on Android, Smart TV, IOS, and the Xbox, Play Station and Wii app are on the way. So who are our priority customers?

In 2011 I was explaining the concept of ICU Online to four potential investors, we were in a bar in Brixton, I was asked by one of the ladies for the url of ICU Online, then 3 iPhones popped out and the young ladies typed in my web address. One young lady however had a phone I had never seen before; it was the Samsung Galaxy S2. After a few minutes the iPhone users were on my site, the videos did not show and all the flash elements of the site were blank, it looked awful, then the young lady with the Samsung turned her phone around and there was my site in all of its glory. I remember thinking to myself “wow, this is like sitting in a Samsung commercial”. The three iPhones were quickly put away and the meeting continued, powered by Samsung. I now own a Samsung Galaxy S2, mostly because I had never been so impressed by a phone in my life, and I simply just had to own one, something the iPhone never provoked in me.

It is not just the fact that the S2 had a bigger and brighter screen and ran faster and smoother than the iPhone that made me buy one, but a simpler fact and one that I personally think may be the death of the iPhone. In 2008 Apple made the defining move to leave Flash technology off all their IOS devices, because apparently “Flash” was a dying technology, and if Apple had their way Flash would have died and been buried by now. This was a very big move by Apple because they were making a statement about Adobe Flash and effectively killing of an entire industry, and with it all the Flash developers who depended on a demand for Flash animations to be online to help them earn their bread and butter. I know, because I was one of these Flash developers effected by Apple’s move, suddenly the demand for my services dwindled.

Steve Jobs went on record to explain the reason for Flash being left off the IOS devises as they were unreliable, huge file sizes and clunky. Html 5 was going to be the alternative to Flash and with that in development there was no need to have Flash on their devices.

But to us tech heads knowing this was not the case, and never having a problem with the issues described by Mr. Jobs we needed a real answer, rumors flew around that Apple and Adobe fell out because it seems that Adobe catered to the PC markets first and then developed for the Mac market as an after thought, tired of this treatment Apple just simply decided “Sod you then”. Which made a lot more sense than Mr. Jobs explanation.

So when the S2 came out on the android operating system and function with Flash perfectly, not suffering from any of the systems Mr Jobs described would have happened on the iPhone had they installed it, it proved that Mr Jobs was absolutely wrong about Flash technology on the smart phone. Which brings us right up to today, if you own an iPhone you are still under the delusion Flash is a dying technology, however there are simply loads, hundreds if not thousands of websites you cannot fully view, but you will have no such limitations with an Android phone. A version of every app available for the iPhone is now available on the Android operating system, so there is no real advantage in owning an iPhone, however the advantage of owning a Samsung or any Android device is the freedom to view the web in all of its glory, including all the flash animation and commecials made in Flash.

In 2013 Flash is making a huge comeback, Google have just made an add in flash highlighting great inventors, a business just contacted me to see if I still develop in flash because they want an online brochure and nothing seems to have replaced Flash effectively yet, and as the demand for flash on websites makes a surge back into the market, the more isolated iPhone users will be.

Unfortunately it seems the iPhone is destined to become a thing of the past, like Betamax and Laser Disc. As to date I 2013 Apple have shrunk down to only having 25% of the mobile phone market while Samsung and Android phones enjoy 75% and the gap is increasing.