Who can’t remember back in June when Steve Jobs said that Hypercard was more popular than Flash? Furthermore who wasn’t aware of the hate-hate relationship between Jobs and Adobe and Jobs’ decision to not use Flash as part of his IOS?
Well fast forward to yesterday when the Skyfire, a Flash-enabled browser, went on sale yesterday for $2.99 in the Apple iPhone market. The popular browser that originated as an Android app had to be pulled off the shelves of the iPhone store in 5 hours because Skyfire didn’t have the server space to accommodate any more downloads.
After the Skyfire browser was announced and iPhone/iPad users found out that it supported Flash, it quickly surged in popularity. Skyfire said this on their blog:
The user experience was performing well for the first few hours, but as the surge continued, the peak load on our servers and bandwidth caused the video experience to degrade.
Thus we are effectively ‘sold out’ and will temporarily not accept new purchases from the App Store. We are working really hard to increase capacity and will be accepting new purchases from the App Store as soon as we can support it.
Skyfire will add their browser back to the iPhone store after it rectifies their server capacity issues. They are working hard to ensure that everyone who wants a Flash browsing experience on their iPhone can get it via Skyfire.
So now we have to ask, with Skyfire overloading their servers and pulling their app off the market, does this in fact mean that Steve Jobs was wrong and iPhone users do care about Flash?
Android is the only mobile operating system that can work natively with flash. Android users with 2.2 Froyo or better can download Adobe Flash 10.1 and an Adobe Air module that will allow for the Flash experience, and interactive Flash experience. Android also supports HTML 5, which Jobs insists is the standard going forward.
Because of their consistent developer support and robust portfolio of utilization, Adobe Flash is a staple both online and on the mobile web. The Android Operating System offers many options for its users to provide a seamless experience from computer to phone and back. Android Rocks!
Source: mobileburn, skyfire blog
