With delays in the implementation of Flash-based video in tablets coming from not just one manufacturer, it is beginning to look like the "Flash War" between Apple and Adobe is deeper than just market politics. There might actually be a difficult technical hurdle involved.

Flash support is the unique selling proposition of everybody else who wants to chip away at the iPad's market share but there seems to be a problem.

Samsung, the first to ship a product with Flash support in the Galaxy Tab late last year, had been beset with complaints of flash video not playing smoothly, and even cutting battery life significantly.

Motorola's Xoom was shipped without any Flash support - and this was a much trumpeted feature.

Now, RIM's Playbook tablet release has slid to mid-April this year from the original Q1 schedule.

Of course, we can all look to Adobe for a way out of this problem as they did promise to have a Flash implementation for tablets 'within weeks' of release of Honeycomb (Android 3.0) based products. Its a statement pregnant with unsaid words about the technical dynamics of putting Flash in tablets.

The tendency to make assumptions in this discussion is strong. Thinking that Flash in a tablet is like having it in a PC is a common misconception. Another is that running flash video in a table involves the same processes more or less, as running any other video file format. Another misconception that might have ben sacrificed on the altar of the market share gods.

First, running flash in a tablet cannot be like running it on a traditional computer. Flash involves an almost all-software based execution. In a PC, very little hardware is brought to bear to throw it up on the screen. It is the CPU that does all the work from decoding the digital video, combining that with graphics such as subtitles, ensuring that the video is in sync with the audio, and then working out where to start the video if for some reason some frames are dropped in the file transfer process. In a traditional PC, a CPU doing this would by itself consume from 7 to 9 watts of power. A tablet would not even get close to using two watts and that's for the CPU, the screen, the Wifi and even the 3G radio.

This is why tablets have great battery life. They use processors that evolved from smartphone duty. But subjecting them to the kind of heavy crunching needed by Flash video will not come without a trade-off. Battery life is usually the first to go. Apple wanted battery endurance to be 10 hours hence, so no Flash. In contrast, RIM executives have only said that the Playbook's battery life will exceed one hour.