More than 60 percent of all streaming video on the Web is HTML5-compatible (H.264), according to video-sharing site MeFeedia (via CNET). In less than a year, the amount of video on the Web that does not require Adobe Flash has grown more than 50 percent. Undoubtedly, this news should make Steve Jobs happy. Last year, the Apple CEO announced that Apple would no longer support Flash.
HTML5 is the newest version of HTML and the first to support direct <video> embedding tags within Web pages, enabling sites to embed video without using a third party plug-in like Adobe Flash. Currently, H.264 is the most popular new format, followed by VP8 and then Ogg. Oddly, Google recently dropped support for H.264 in its Chrome browser.
Though some video sites like Hulu have resisted HTML5, major players have embraced the change including YouTube, Daily Motion, Vimeo, and Blip TV. While the change away from Flash represents a maturing of the market, with several new video formats duking it out, it has become much more complex to post video to the Web.
MeFeedia also reports that traffic from mobile devices is now 5 percent, up from 1 percent last year.
To get these results, MeFeedia indexed around 30 million videos from more than 33,000 video Web sites.