Flash Penetration: The Truth

Friday, February 27th, 2009

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…

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99% Flash Player Penetration – Too Good to be True?

Friday, February 20th, 2009

Adobe makes much of the fact that its Flash player has become” the world’s most pervasive software platform” bridging the worlds of PC, Mac and Linux. Nowadays this claim is generally taken as read but ultimately it depends on the ubiquity of the Flash player as advertised on the Adobe site.

But should the claims be taken at face value?

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