I heard something like HTML 5 will replace the needs of flash for doing various things Have I missunderstood?
I think that HTML5 will replace the need for some more simple tasks, for example with the use of video and audio tags in combination with the use of javascript and css, but I think that Flash does a great job and will keep on doing so of going beyond what HTML5 will be able to do.
HTML5 can do some simple task for Flash but this will not be the replace of the Flash at this time at all.
They said the same thing about Silverlight... Time will tell. I think that Flash will be around for a bit though.
HTML5 has video, audio, and graphics drawing capabilities built in and runs on any platform and any browser with no plugins needed. All the modern browsers (not IE) support all of that right now but refinements are still being worked on as well as authoring tools. So Flash may be in trouble. Almost no one uses Silverlight now so that's dead now.