I was responding to two statements in one comment; I apologize for the confusing non-sequitur. I do agree that plugins are OS and CPU specific, but I think the

I was responding to two statements in one comment; I apologize for the confusing non-sequitur. I do agree that plugins are OS and CPU specific, but I think the popularity and explicit lack of support in iOS and Mobile Safari (which, to my understanding, are stripped down ports of OS X and Safari) really caused web developers and their clients to move off of Flash (and other plugins). For a number of years, Adobe shipped a version of Flash for Android, and I'm under the impression that they were always willing to port it to other platforms/devices if paid enough money (since the Linux binaries had an explicit restriction from inclusion in devices; you could only use them with general-purpose PCs). Java ME ran on phones for years, too, although I don't recall anyone shipping a mobile browser with Java SE plugin support. If someone (a client or web developer) wanted their website to work on iPhone, they had to remove the plugins, and I think many people just started designing around that constraint.