50% of desktop web users. The encoding landscape is considerably different in the mobile world, and will be until Android tablets are both released and then adopted in large enough quantities. Currently though, most video is still in h.264 format and either served via Quicktime [edit: Media Framework] for iOS, or Flash for PC.
Yes, it's definitely different in the mobile world. Mobile is still a very small portion of overall web use though. It's difficult to tell if StatCounter includes all mobile browsers in their overall stats, but they do at least include the iPad. Either way it would barely make a dent in overall numbers. http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-ww-monthly-2009...
I'd have to say the benefit of html5 video is greater on mobile devices and Macs, domains where Flash performance has traditionally been terrible, and where a content provider will most likely spend effort in patching UX.
It'll be a bit until WebM chipsets come out for the incoming flood of Android tablets, and since h.264 is the easiest target, I can't see the current statistics really influencing the encoding of video until Android can make a dent. Flash video works great for the 90% of computers running Windows and the plugin, so why fix something that works?
Wait, what’s the fraction on Mobile? Because it’s not like the percentage of mobile web users who have full Flash is anywhere near 50%, it’s gotta be less than that!
Good point - I am getting really excited about some of the new players and ideas in the html5 video space. Just applied for the beta of http://sublimevideo.net/ - very promising, html5 video w/ flash fallback and mobile support.
Sublime is great, but closed-source and is going to charge for use. Many of the open source players beyond just VideoJS are just as good, IMO. Also depends on what you need.
Uh, no. :) I understand where with all the hype you might expect HTML5 video to have more support, but it's still a new technology, and requires that browsers build in support and then users upgrade to the newest versions. I imagine with the release of IE9 we'll see a big jump, and hopefully MS will be more aggressive in pushing out that update.
That is, if you limit yourself to one format only. If you provide Flash then it's probably H.264. In that case it's not 50% but 10% support for HTML5 Video. If you want to offer HTML5 Video for the 50% you need at least to transcode to Theora. And that, depending on scale, is not so trivial anymore.
Though that starts to look better if you consider good adoption of IE9 and Firefox on Windows with Microsoft's plugin.
You may not be able to just feed Flash WebM files: Adobe has only committed to supporting the VP8 codec, not Vorbis or Matroska (http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2010/05/adobe_support_f...). I wonder if the primary purpose Flash video will be making timeshifting impractical for normal people through weird formats and protocols.
"In other words we calculate our Global Stats on the basis of more than 15 billion hits per month, by people from all over the world onto our 3 million+ member sites."
