Flash has been the default technology that is being used for animations, audio and video. Until Flash came along, there was no easy way to play any of these file formats. However now the HTML author has decided to support video so that the dependency on external applications and plug-ins are heavily reduced.
HTML 5 came out with the <video> tag which will change the way we implement web applications. This tag basically provides us a way to embed videos without using any plug-ins. Which means in the newer browsers which will support HTML 5, instead of loading a flash or silverlight players onto the browser, we can just give a video URL to the <video> tag and the browser takes care of the rest.
With Apple going all the way to completely discourage Flash by not supporting the technology in their successful products like iPod and iPad, the message is clear. The reason given by Apple is that Flash hogs up the CPU and this in turn would impact battery life.
Initial tests show that HTML5 was much more efficient and consumed less CPU than Flash. However this is is still a new way of doing things and the browser support is still very nascent. So whether Flash will completely be replaced will also largely depend on how well HTML 5 will be supported and accepted in the market.
