Gingerbread 2.3.3 First Version of Android to Support WebM Content
Kevin Krause
WebM was introduced by Google last year as their answer to developing a media codec capable of reproducing high-quality video while being easily portable and open source. Google isn’t the only company backing the project, as Mozilla, Opera, Adobe and forty other companies have their hands in WebM. While it is still in its infancy, Google has enabled support for WebM in the latest update to Android Gingerbread (2.3.3), as you can see in its list of core media formats at the Android Developers site.
Google has big plans for WebM and will back it extensively, going so far as to drop H.264 codec support in the Chrome browser and shift towards the new open format in products such as YouTube. Whether or not, and how quickly, it catches on remains to be seen, but at least phones rocking Android 2.3.3 or above won’t be left behind.
