Mobile Technology

Flash video-capable Skyfire 2.0 for iPhone browser “sells out” in five hours

Skyfire 2.0 for iPhone "sold out" in just five hours
Skyfire 2.0 for iPhone "sold out" in just five hours

Looks like the legions of iPhone users are pretty keen to get Flash video on their device with news that Skyfire 2.0 mobile web browser has effectively “sold out.” Within five hours of being released on iTunes, the Skyfire Flash video solution shot to the head of the top grossing app list and third highest paid app overall and overloaded the Skyfire servers, leaving potential buyers staring at the “Please Upgrade Flash” message while the folks at Skyfire Labs scramble to increase capacity.

The browser was able to get approval from Apple since it doesn’t actually process the Flash video on the device. Rather, the video is rendered at Skyfire’s servers and re-encoded in a HTML 5-compatible format before being relayed to the phone. For this reason, although they’ll be able to view Flash video, iPhone users still won’t be able to play Flash games or view any other type of Flash content.

Skyfire is a fully-fledged Webkit browser built on top of Safari. The browser also includes a couple of other nifty features including multi-tab browsing and an “explore” feature that analyzes a webpage for key search terms to make it easy to search for related content. Returned searches can then be filtered by content such as videos, images or tweets. Users can also share content via email, Facebook and twitter at the touch of a button, while a Facebook Quickview mode lets users check their Facebook Wall without opening another app or page.

Skyfire 2.0 is also available for Android, while Skyfire 1.5 is available for Windows Mobile and Symbian phones. When Skyfire 2.0 for iPhone is once again available, it can be downloaded from the iTunes store for US$2.99.

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5 comments
Facebook User
"The browser was able to get approval from Apple since it doesn't actually process the Flash video on the device. Rather, the video is rendered at Skyfire's servers and re-encoded in a HTML 5-compatible format before being relayed to the phone."
What an Alice in Wonderland situation. Simply bizarre. I will never understand the world of Apple politics.
For those who prefer to play guitar without gloves, there is always android :)
Facebook User
Sold Out! Am I missing something? It is a piece of software download from iTune, not a piece of HW that depleted the inventory for each sale. Is it another marketing hype again? In any case, HTML5 will get rid of this arcane technology so called Flash.
t2af
it\'s quite easy to understand; they don\'t want buggy, memory inefficient, battery draining, security liable software on their platform. In recent flash tests on the macbook air it reduced the battery by 33% - not by viewing videos - just by having it active. I think skyfire is a stopgap solution as the average person doesn\'t know/want to activate and deactivate flash or have to manage it- they will just blame their short battery life on the device - apple - which is something it doesn\'t want. personally i wish adobe had pulled it\'s finger out and made a decent version of flash that would run on the iphone (and while they were at it - fixed the laughable version that is on my mac so it doesn\'t use 100% of my processor) before crying foul to the press - pissing off apple who then blocked it; but those options have sailed.
Ludwig Heinrich
Probably what was \"sold out\" was their own server capacity?
BTW I agree with t2af. I used to develop Flash website interfaces but after noting the instabilty, sluggishness and insecurity I gave that up. Adobe obviously didn\'t care about the Mac so it\'s little wonder that Apple kept them off the iPhone/iPad. And, just as another BTW, I have Flash blocking software on all my browsers and what I miss out on is annoying ads. I can live with that:-)
christopher
Hey t2af - you\'ve got it all wrong.

Apple do not allow *any* software that they don\'t approve to run on their devices.

Flash is a *framework* that allows arbitrary software to run safely.

That\'s why Apple ban it. Because they cannot control what it does. It\'s got nothing to do with battereis or bugs.

It\'s the pure politics of market control mate.