Flash Player 8: 12.9%
Stunning news this week: the install base of Flash Player 8 has fallen below 13%! ;-)
Emmy Huang previews the March penetration stats for the Flash player, and they’re excellent: over 83% of web users in “Mature Markets” already have Flash Player 9 installed!
It seemed almost like poor planning when, last year, the Flash tools fell out of sync: thanks to Flex 2, ActionScript 3 and Flash Player 9 were the hot new setup, but the poor Flash IDE was stuck on version 8 using lowly AS2.
Yet here we are this week, and it seems like the best plan ever — the new Flash CS3 has been in your hands for at most a day or two, and your users are already able to handle whatever you can create!
Has that ever happened before?!
Normally there’s that looong delay between the exciting arrival of a new version of Flash and the day you finally say to your clients: it’s time. We can use our new toys now. The world is ready.
This time the world was already ready!
Well played, Adobe!
April 19th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
“Player 8 below 13%”… good perspective, made me laugh, thanks! :)
jd/adobe
May 8th, 2007 at 8:21 am
Except that it really hasn’t… remember, Flash Player stats are additive. Meaning that the individual Flash Player install base is not what counts. The total percentage of users that CAN VIEW Flash 8 content is the Flash Player 8 install base + the Flash Player 9 install base. So, the number of users that can view FP8 content is about 96%. That number is impressive and is what really counts.
May 11th, 2007 at 8:17 am
Absolutely right! I was just trying to think of a funny way to be the last person to report on this news. And it continually amazes me how, in one year, FP8 went from being the new hotness to old and busted. ;-)