So Spotify, due to the end of Flash player moved to HTML5 player.
And then the only browser which need a flash player is Apple Safari ?
Oh, the irony :-)
Which ones? Desktop Safari still supports Flash and it has DRM available in the form of FairPlay. It's the latter which those other platforms are presumably using.
The iPhone was released in the summer of 2007, didn’t support Flash, and wasn’t intended to run third-party apps[0]. After Jobs caved on releasing an SDK, they finally opened the App Store the following autumn. There was never an opportunity for “Flash portals” to compete with the App Store, let alone to influence the decision to support Flash in the first place.
And if you really want to know, read this article from Wired on the topic: https://www.wired.com/2008/11/adobe-flash-on/
Sad that I get downvoted for this, but I already accepted that on hacker news, don't go against all the Apple and Google fanboys.
When I was reading “the only reason they did that was because …”, I mentally substituted the pronouns to read “the only reason Apple didn’t support Flash on the original iPhone was because …”. And then I was left with “The only reason Apple didn’t support Flash on the original iPhone was because Flash portals were competing with their app store”. So that’s the idea that I was confronting. If that’s not the sentiment you were advancing, then the first thing we should do is settle it.
But since I'm defending Flash, and saying something negative about Apple, let the downvotes begin.
But the blocking of Flash was a business decision, not a technical one, or even a "support the open web" one.
And so yes, if they allowed Flash, then portals were indeed a direct competitor to their app store. That is why they kept them out.
Second, I'm not suggesting that the threat posed by Flash wasn't ever a factor in any decision Apple ever made about supporting Flash on iOS (then iPhone OS). But you said "the only reason they did that ...", which suggests that there were no other reasons ever. But if the first iPhone was never intended to run 3rd party apps, then there was nothing to compete with at first. If there was nothing to compete with, then the initial decision not to support Flash could not have been motivated by the threat to the then-not-even-planned-to-exist App Store.
Before the App Store (and still today), iPhone had support for third party apps and an open (non-Apple App Store) app ecosystem, HTML5 apps installable to home screen with offline mode. At the time, you could install games like PacMac that worked fine.
Apple avoided support for Flash because it was absolute crap on mobile, from hardware issues affecting battery life to UX issues such as presumption of a cursor and hover states.
I wish developers and media streamers had let go of Flash sooner and moved to HTML5+JS, before the native App Store captured all the mindshare. Apple’s biggest mistake here was misunderstanding the lasting power of Adobe’s simpler tool ecosystem for “creators”.
iPhone didn’t need Flash. It did need better tools.
// Source: Owned a video CDN throughout the player wars, with ongoing first person conversations with folks from the companies in question, and their key media and publishing clients were our clients.