News that Adobe has ended support of its widespread Mobile Flash technology, which allows the viewing of around a quarter of small business websites from mobile and tablet devices in the UK, could cost SMEs a total of £500 million as their websites become obsolete to a significant percentage of web users.With approximately 25 per cent of small business websites using at least some elements of Flash in their website it is estimated that t could cost an average of £1,000 per site to upgrade. So if even half of the UK’s 4.5 million SMEs have a website, that’s a potential cost to the SME community of over £500 million.
By ending its support for Mobile Flash Adobe's decision has potentially huge implications for the SME community. In the short term, this will affect all small businesses that receive a lot of traffic to their website or generate online sales from mobile and tablet devices.
The mobile internet has been an important source of lead generation and sales for many small businesses and its growth is set to continue, with mobile search likely to account for nearly 20 per cent of all search queries by 2012. That’s an enormous amount of traffic that SMEs cannot afford to miss out on.
Although initially Adobes decision only affects mobile devices, it is likely that Adobe will eventually phase out Flash support completely, a serious consideration for any SME with a Flash-based website (such as Moonfruit) or uses elements of Flash in their site, such as video players, animations and advertising. We advise any organisation looking at investing in a new website, or redesigning an existing one, to prepare for a future without Flash and avoid the costs of having to tear up their site and start again.
Flash’s natural successor is much championed HTML5, a new breed of website programming language that gives all the benefits of Flash without its significant drawback.
