Jean-Louis Gassée writes a great blog post talking about the mindset of Steve Jobs in how Apple is competing with the rest of the world in order to own the mobile application space. Jean-Louis writes a post called “The Adobe – Apple Flame War”.

He writes:

Who, in his right mind, expects Steve Jobs to let Adobe (and other) cross-platform application development tools control his (I mean the iPhone OS) future? Cross-platform tools dangle the old “write once, run everywhere” promise. But, by being cross-platform, they don’t use, they erase “uncommon” features. To Apple, this is anathema as it wants apps developers to use, to promote its differentiation. It’s that simple. Losing differentiation is death by low margins. It’s that simple. It’s business. Apple is right to keep control of its platform’s future.

Steve Jobs has seen enough in his 34 years in the computer business to know, deeply, that he doesn’t want to be at the mercy of cross-platform tools that could erase Apple’s competitive advantage.

Let’s perform a thought experiment. By the end of 2010, there will be more than 100 million iPhone OS devices (iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad). You’re the webmeister at an important content site. The boss comes in and asks you why you’re not supporting the iPhone OS devices. ‘Our stuff is all Flash-based, chief, those guys don’t run Flash’. You’re about to become the ex-webmeister. The boss, a really patient sort, asks you to “think different” about all these “non-compliant” customers, each of whom has an iTunes account backed by a credit card, and has developed the habit (encouraged by Apple) of paying for content. So, one more time, with feeling: What’s your answer?

I wrote a post about this last week. This is important because mobile and cloud are one of the top breakout trends for the next decade – another post which I wrote about here – User 2.0.

This is important because there are many opportunities around the convergence of the “new web” – meaning the user adoption of web as part of people’s lives is changing and disrupting all incumbent leaders within key industry segments. I’ve been tracking for two years now the convergence of the “real time social web”, cloud/infrastructure 2.0, and mobile. That translates to user experience bets (next big consumer company and applications), infrastructure like networking, and devices. One common theme in which big bets will be made will be around “software” and the “user” (or internet consumer).

My stance is that if one company that dominates any platform it can be counterproductive certainly with Apple having control that isn’t a good thing. The good news is that there is a ton of competition across the board. Any move by Apple will have an impact to the innovation ecosystem as highlighted by their move to get into advertising hence the Adobe flame war.

For the long version click here.

Also see a post by Kara Swisher at AllThingD on the matter and @karaswisher has a video with Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch.