Which would happen first - would Apple and Adobe get together to bring Flash (and therefore hulu) to the iPhone, or would hulu (like the similarly Flash-based YouTube service) write a workaround iPhone App?

Historically, Apple has been uninterested in letting Adobe get its Flash Player technology onto the iPhone.  Technical power consumption issues have been often cited,  but given that Google’s Android devices have had Flash support from almost square one, perhaps a more reasonable explanation for Apple’s resistance has had to do with a desire to promote their competing Quicktime technology.   Meanwhile, Flash has become the clear defacto standard for web-based video streaming (according to Adobe, the Flash Player is installed on  98% of US browsers) - and in terms of the still nascent embedded CE hardware market, Adobe alone seems to ‘get it’,  recently making decisive moves to become just as ubiquitous there as they are on the browser (more on that here).

Perhaps hulu was waiting for the Apple to cave - surely it would be a much less heavy lift to bring the service to the iPhone if the device supported the Flash platform already being used.   According to recent reports, though, it appears hulu has  decided to go the YouTube route and develop a non-Flash iPhone App: according to recent reports, hulu has  decided to go the YouTube route and develop an iPhone App based (presumably) on MP4/Quicktime technology.

This is going to be a big deal.  When released later this year, look for the hulu application to immediately become one of the most popular iPhone Apps ever released (and in the process, look for it to present a serious short-term challenge for the folks running the App Store servers!)

Two other things come to mind:

• Hulu is great, but to date has been firmly tethered to the web browser and the computer - not an optimal solution for longer-form and/or social viewing.   In fact, when NYC-based startup Boxee started getting hulu to the television screens of even a relatively minuscule number of early adapters a few months ago, hulu’s content-providing owners News Corp. and NBCU promptly initiated a technical cat-and-mouse game of denying access from Boxee software.  It is against this backdrop that hulu will release its iPhone App - the first officially sanctioned non-browser implementation of hulu (maybe having dipped a toe in the water, hulu’s understandably gun-shy content owners will consider letting the service reach the television someday).
• And that day may come soon.   Although in my experience, AT&T’s 3G network is too rickety for dependable delivery of internet radio (let alone video), hulu (like all iPhone apps) will run on wireless LANs as well.   Consider, then, the performance (and resolution) possible using the hulu app via your robust home broadband connection - and consider the user experience running it on the much-anticipated Apple netbook coming this fall - essentially a 6 inch by 8 inch touchscreen iPhone-esque tablet.

So while it’s great hulu is coming to the iPhone, what many analysts are missing is the hulu/Apple netbook scenario: imagine a slim, sleek, wireless internet television tablet appliance for the home, with content available on demand from most cable networks and (now that Disney is on board) all the major terrestrial networks except CBS.

That could turn out to be, as they’re fond of saying in Cuppertino, “insanely great.”