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IE9’s market share will be capped by only working on Windows Vista with Service pack 2 installed, Direct2D, and Windows7, and it will take some time to overtake IE8’s 20% share.

Add this with serious CSS bugs, (as you can see by the YouTube video, showing the video menu page) which have to be worked out, and it will take extra time to take it to market. as HTML5 ready.

Safari is under 5%
and IE9 is not here yet

Google Chrome plays both (so Chrome is a draw)

Firefox 3.6 alone, is already at over half a BILLION downloads now in May 2010.

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The Pyramid is upside-down, in Favor of OGG-video + HTML5

The pipeline to play H.264 to the public using HTML5 is narrower than OGG-video.

Here is the list

http://www.oggtv.com/communicate.html

Media companies using OGG-video, have a clear path to HTML5 browser playback.

Counting plugins is pointless; or rather, if you do, H.264 reach becomes 99.99999% because Flash plays it…

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Time to update the numbers again, OGG-video can work on IE9 now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZOaB_Cg4DU

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2010/03/16/html5-hardware-accelerated-first-ie9-platform-preview-available-for-developers.aspx

Mobile phones get replaced every 2 years, so the next generation of mobile phones could already have some in-built Theora support – always assuming that general-purpose Theora support is indeed as battery-draining as you’re saying, which is not proven yet.

Opera is one of the most widely spread mobile browsers and they only support Theora out of the box. Chrome supports Theora out of the box.

So, a lot of phones apart from the iPhone – and this includes Android – may in future support Ogg Theora and for some site owners this will be much better to publish video than in a format where they have to pay a large royalty.

Further, it is possible to develop a iPhone app that is an Ogg Theora player – similar to how there is an iPhone app for YouTube and one for Dailymotion etc. In this way, the iPhone may yet bet some Ogg Theora support.

I don’t think foretelling the future is easy here. I firmly believe we are looking into a mixed future right now.

We will have the large content owners – in particular those that are keen on DRM – continue to support H.264, cause they pay already and don’t really care about those royalties, which are just peanuts to them.

We will also have the smaller sites – those that the Web was originally made for – those that make up the diversity and the long tail of the Web – use Ogg Theora, because all the tools are free and it is easy to publish Ogg Theora video.

Unfortunately, we may see a world where we need to open – at least for a while – two browsers to perceive the world – or we all move to Chrome.

BTW: when you say “Google bend over” – do you mean YouTube? Since Chrome already supports Theora out of the box…

Also, your argument on MPEG-2 is completely missing the point: back then, one couldn’t care less about spending more CPU cycle, from lack of a better option. Now, by contrast, saving those extra CPU to expand a mobile device’s battery life makes every difference in the world.

As I see things, it’ll be too late by the time it’s a problem.

Between now and in 5 years, we’ll have, what… 100M+ phones per year, 15%+ of which are smart phones, with the two figures increasing each year… Counting existing smart phones on top, let’s say 250-300M devices.

With these figures in mind, my own take on the outcome looks like this:

- Apple stands firm and Flash doesn’t make it into the iPhoneOS in the next two years.

- Things turn mobile in a major way in the next two years, with iPhones, possibly iPads, and Android-based phones getting the lion’s share.

- Site owners rush to deliver videos on their sites for iPhone (and iPad) users; HTML5/H.264 goes mainstream, since it’s the only option to do so.

- Batteries last longer when using Chrome or Safari in mobile phones. Both gain traction in the mobile browser war; this exacerbates the problem.

- On a separate front, patent problems force small webmasters onto large CDNs, with a positive (albeit too late) side effect: ogg becomes more widely available.

How the patent mess gets resolved in the end is anyone’s guess. I’ll merely guess this much: unless Apple does a U-Turn and allows iPhone browser plugins, the cost and battery considerations that go into iPhoneOS/Safari and Android/Chrome be blocking on the hardware front.

I might be spreading a bit of FUD indeed. Part of me hopes so.

FWIW as a business owner, though, I don’t see much of a future in Theora unless Apple and Google bend over.