Skyfire selling like wildfire

David Swan
Friday, 05 November 2010 14:50

Your IT - Mobility

Skyfire Labs has released an alternative iPhone browser that plays Flash content and is about as popular as a Metallica concert, selling out within hours.

 

According to the company, its paid Gecko-based web browser app became the top grossing app in the App Store within five hours of launch, causing the company to temporarily cease selling the app in order to ease the load on its servers.

In order to play a Flash video on a website, Skyfire apparently uploads the video to its servers, converts it to the iPhone-friendly HTML5 format, and streams it back to the device, in a process that happens very quickly. This of course allows for the streaming of Flash content to iOS devices, but is subject to server overloads if the demand gets too high, like what has happened now.

Skyfire Labs says it is working towards increasing its server capacity and will be re-opening purchases soon.

Skyfire 2.x is available for both Android and iOS devices, and Android 1.5, 1.6, 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2 phones are supported. The iOS version supports any iPhone or iPod Touch running iOS 4 or above.

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