It's hard, nowadays, to imagine the internet without Flash. For better or worse, Adobe's latest acquisition is ubiquitous online, in the form of advertisements, splash screens, animated elements and even entire websites.

Once upon a time, when the true capabilities of Flash were only just becoming apparent, there were hundreds of all-Flash websites. That meant hundreds of websites which were slow to load, difficult to navigate, not standards-compliant, inaccessible to visually impaired and disabled users, and just downright annoying to an awful lot of visitors.

Luckily, we're mostly out of that phase. Corporate websites are not usually all-Flash any more, although they may feature a Flash intro (which can usually be skipped). There are many more Flash advertisements than there were, though, many of which actually encroach on the content of websites by "popping up" in front of it – not in a real, separate window, which your pop-up blocker can deal with, but in such a way that you are forced to click a tiny X before the darned thing will go away. (This games website often features irritating Flash adverts – I can't guarantee it will happen, but try rolling over the banner ads at the top or side of pages of this site, and see if you get a Flashy surprise.)

The reason for Flash mania is partly the ubiquity of the Flash Player plug-in. Adobe claims that over 98% of internet users can view Flash content of one form or another online. Unlike with other online media plug-ins, such as video streaming plug-in DivX or Apple QuickTime, a web designer can rely on the overwhelming majority of visitors to their site having the Flash Player plug-in. That means there'll be no problem with them viewing videos, animations, applications, or, most notably, advertising – no one's going to download a plug-in just so that they can see an advert.

Some commentators are claiming, however, that Flash's ubiquity is under threat. This is because of Apple's recent release of its new touchscreen mobile telephone, the iPhone. The iPhone uses a version of Apple's home-grown web browser, Safari – and this special mobile device version of the browser doesn't support the Flash Player plug-in.

It'd be nice to think that Apple have done this to try and keep the mobile Web standards-compliant and non-proprietary, and this is certainly possible, given the attitude with which Apple has discussed this issue: they are suggesting alternatives to Flash such as CSS, JavaScript and AJAX, rather than promising a future update or plug-in. Flash is known to have problems with performance and memory leaks, and this will be more of a problem in the battery-governed world of mobile browsing. Apple could have taken this into account.

However, it may just be that Apple are waiting for Adobe to pull their finger out and stop charging a licence fee for an iPhone-compatible version of Flash Player. If this is the case, Adobe need to wake up. Flash's ubiquity in the mobile browsing market could be seriously compromised if Apple's iPhone gains the same kind of popularity as a smartphone as the iPod did as an mp3 player. There are rumours that some sort of Flash plug-in or workaround will be introduced in the future, but Apple are hardly shouting about it.

By Helena Henderson

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