The first part of this isn't quite correct if I am remembering correctly. Flash (or at least the engine behind it) is still on both Android and iPhone platforms through its app equivelant called Air. There's a lot of things that use Air... to give you an idea, Angry Birds was first written and deployed to Air. So though Apple complained about performance issues, they were not the biggest deal. If I was to take a guess, it was mainly to prevent the web from competing with the app store. So I think his comment is at least somewhat right. Apple didn't want an app store competitor (think Kongregate or Newgrounds competing with the games part of the app store)
Flash on Android existed, and I actually used it, and I can pretty much guarantee you it was never going to be competitive with the way it ran on contemporary smart phones. I don’t get how Flash applets on a website were ever at risk of competing with the app store. HTML and PWA is a more compelling option today than I think Flash ever was, and Apple contributed greatly to that fact with Webkit...
I tried it too and it wasn't the best. But I have a general feeling it was because those particular games weren't really well optimized for the phone. Then again, they were a it more complex than the other games on the phone at the time... but alas.
I'm not sure if it would have grown into a competitor either way. But some people definitely tried to - Kongregate at one point built an app specifically for mobile flash games. Naturally google took it down (you aren't allowed to host 'app stores' on the 'app store'). But it had quite a few downloads. That's just for something on the app store, not directly on a website, but I think the point is that maybe if things had gone a bit differently it might have been more competitive.
For PWAs, yeah, today, they definitely are, but it's taken a long time for them to come that way.
Of course, though, you can distribute your own app stores on Android via sideloading a la F-Droid and Epic Games. Perhaps in 2011, it just didn’t seem as doable, or maybe sideloading was disabled by more vendors... not sure.
