With Google opening up VP8 the market is likely to be shifted in the next 4-5 years. They have both the money and tech background to make VP8 just as good if not better. Hardware adoption is a matter of time.
Or even closer to the topic, RealPlayer.
"For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting." - Gen. George C. Patton
If I had stakes at H264 or any proprietary video coded/format. I would be concerned for my future.
All video codecs are covered by patents. A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other “open source” codecs now. Unfortunately, just because something is open source, it doesn’t mean or guarantee that it doesn’t infringe on others patents. An open standard is different from being royalty free or open source.
Source: http://blogs.fsfe.org/hugo/2010/04/open-letter-to-steve-jobs...
Was Steve referring to VP8, its not opensource now, he is most likely only referring to existing open source codec.
For example, see Vorbis and FLAC support in Quicktime.
They've got youtube, I think that's a much bigger factor here.