A lot of people seemed to be surprised this is the case but tell me what single live streaming protocol is supported across all browsers without a plugin?
With Flash you can stream HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) to a Flash player in full browsers while just directly loading the same HLS playlist in mobile browsers via native players (iOS / Android).
This means you can deliver live streaming over the same audio/video codec (H.264/AAC) and over the same protocol (HLS). This vastly simplifies your streaming infrastructure and removes the need for transcoding on the server, unless you just want to create different qualities for adaptive bitrate streaming.
It would be nice if "desktop" browsers all supported HLS and H.264/AAC natively, that would be a real Flash killer.