Before the New Year’s champagne has even been poured, positive Christmas sales stats are being alluded to all over the Internet. But IBM Benchmark’s Christmas Day stats are particularly of interest.

Not because people were shopping online when they should be sitting around with family drinking egg nog and watching A Christmas Story over and over again. What’s interesting is that 13.4% of all online sales were made on an iPad or an iPhone. That’s just on Christmas Day alone.

And we all know that Flash doesn’t work on either of those devices.

I don’t know about you, but when I encounter a site that requires Flash on my iPad, I don’t hop on my desktop. I find a competitor’s site that will give me what I want right away. So you do the math.

Here’s an example of a Flash-based luxury website that looks really cool on a PC, but goes completely black on an iPad: www.theologos.gr

Most brands, especially luxury brands, have nipped this in the bud, either abandoning their Flash sites altogether or complementing them with non-Flash sites for mobile devices.

If you are one of the few who have not done this, I would do it pretty soon.

Adobe announced over a month ago that it will no longer be developing Flash for mobile platforms and will focus instead on HTML5.

I know Flash, when used correctly, can be magical. And yes, it is necessary for certain types of projects, but its drawbacks are widely known. Add to that the increasing use of iEverything for purchasing power, especially in the luxury sector, and putting all your chips with Flash could wind up being a detriment to your bottom line.