As Apple and software giant Adobe battle over the future of online video, there’s one clear winner: Services that help companies add video to their Web sites.
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Outfits such as Brightcove, Sorensen Media’s 360 and Ooyala charge companies a monthly fee to ensure that their videos will play both on the Web and on mobile devices such as Apple’s iPhone and new iPad touch-screen tablet. They serve a range of businesses with heavy video demands: media companies, restaurants, hotels, travel agencies and more.
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Adobe dominates online video with its Flash software, used for some 75 percent of Web video. But Apple doesn’t like Flash and promotes alternatives, including a Web standard called HTML5. Videos that use Flash won’t play at all on Apple’s mobile devices.
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Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrote an essay in late April detailing his criticisms, calling Flash an outdated format that’s a battery drain for mobile devices and prone to crashing. Adobe responded by calling Apple’s claims a smokescreen.
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The war of words over the future of online video has been really great for business, says Jeff Whatcott, Brightcove’s senior vice president of marketing.
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Dan Rayburn, an analyst at Frost Sullivan, says the battle has taken its toll on media companies. It’s time-consuming and costly to re-encode a video library just so it can be seen on the iPad, he says.
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Still, Whatcott says there’s so much interest in the iPad, Our customers want their sites to be seen by everyone now, not later.
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Video site Viddler, which charges $100 monthly for its pro service to companies such as Sony and Engadget, on Tuesday made available a new video player that works with iPads and iPhones.
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This whole thing swept us off our feet, says Viddler President Robert Sandie. We knew the iPad was coming, and despite what Apple said, we thought by now…