Last week’s unveiling of the iPad by Apple again brings the subject of Flash development into focus. Over the weekend, Apple removed introductory videos from its advertising that suggested that the device supported Flash content, after critics claimed that the ads were misleading. It’s a fact – neither the iPhone nor the iPad support Flash. For iPhone users, it’s an inconvenience that is often overlooked because of the thousands of apps that are Flash-free and because many sites publish HTML mobile versions. But for iPad users, we suspect the lack of Flash will be a huge detriment; the iPad has a 9.7” screen and consumers wanting to use it to serf the web will be annoyed at the inability to access key content on many sites.

From a development standpoint, we often counsel our clients to avoid using Flash because of the incompatibility with many mobile devices and because it can be search un-friendly. Mobile content consumption is booming, and while Flash is purportedly coming to Google’s Android mobile browser in 2010, iPhones still account for approximately 50% of all web data traffic. Until these industry titans work out their technical and control issues with Adobe, web content publishers must be careful to provide mobile consumers with rich user experiences that don’t rest on Flash content.