Last week I posted an item questioning Adobe’s claim that “Flash content reaches 99.0% of Internet viewers”. I made the argument on a number of grounds but the bottom line was that the figure just seemed unbelievable when you factor in the number of Linux users and other Flash haters (joke) as well as all those brand new users who haven’t got around to installing yet.

The post was picked up on Slashdot and generated a lot of comment mostly from anti-Flash zealots and those who thought I was questioning the maths rather than the methodology (a survey commissioned by Adobe based on a small panel of opt-in users who were asked whether they could see various items of plug-in content complete with player download dialogs!).

However there was one particularly useful response…

…pointing interested parties in the direction of the “Rich Internet Statistics” site riastats.com. This is a single page site devoted to tracking the player penetration of rich internet application platforms and it outscores Adobe’s own tracking for a number of reasons:

• Figures are based on statistics derived without the need for a survey and from a much wider sample – at the time of writing around 1.5 million unique daily users over the previous 30 day period.
• You can embed some code to find results for your own site – which as James Ward the technical evangelist from Adobe pointed out is the statistic that really matters.
• You don’t have to dig down to find the crucial figures for reach based on the player version.
• You can see how Flash penetration compares to Java and Silverlight (mysteriously missing from Adobe’s analysis) and you can track changes over time with the Line chart.
• You can easily and interactively break down figures based on browser, operating system and language (and filter out stats from sites specifically about ria technologies)

Perhaps most important of all, the site itself is an excellent demonstration of why the Flash deniers and blockers are wrong (not that they’ll ever find out). Flash is capable of much more than irritating pop-up ads and riastats.com shows how it can be used to deliver content more attractively and, crucially, more effectively than HTML.

Riastats.com certainly isn’t perfect – the fact that it is Flash-based does suggest a certain in-built bias and it really ought to publish the sites where statistics are tracked and correct the typo in its title – and of course there’s no single statistical “truth”.

Having said that, what’s the answer? What are the riastats.com figures for Flash penetration?

At the time of writing (drum roll) riastats.com puts the figure for Flash player penetration at roughly 97% – and around 51% for Flash 10 content compared to Adobe’s 56%.

This 2% gap on the headline claim might seem insignificant but it’s not.

One of the problems of the 99% figure – a major plus if you’re Adobe – is that it is seen as effectively ubiquitous. 97% is getting there – and a real achievement and a massive advantage over rivals – but it’s definitely not ubiquitous.

This has important practical implications. In short don’t be tempted to provide Flash-based navigation or other content that is better handled via the truly ubiquitous HTML. Moreover don’t use Flash 10 content unless you have to and, if you’re a Linux-oriented site, be wary of using Flash at all – according to the current stats, 1-in-7 Linux users won’t see anything and less than 1-in-5 will see version 10 content.

These practical issues are important but, ultimately, the main reason that the riastats figure of around 97% is significantly different from Adobe’s figure of 99.0% is simple: it’s believable.