Is Flash Really On 99% of Net Devices? 383
Barence writes "Adobe claims that its Flash platform reaches '99% of internet viewers,' but a closer look at those statistics suggests it's not exactly all-encompassing. Adobe puts Flash player penetration at 947 million users out of a total 956 million internet-connected devices, but the total number of PCs is based on a forecast made two years ago. What's more, the number of Flash users is based on a questionable internet survey of just 4,600 people — around 0.0005% of the suggested 956,000,000 total. Is it really possible that 99% penetration could have been reached? Including Linux users? Including users at work? Including brand-new systems?"
Marketing statistics = bs (Score:3, Insightful)
"Is it really possible that 99% penetration could have been reached? Including Linux users? Including users at work? Including brand-new systems?"
No.
- Ramanujam
Count me... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm proud to be in the 1% of people who haven't been penetrated by Flash.
Flash was originally crafted with the best of intentions, I'm sure, but due to gross misuse by virtually everyone who's ever touched it, Flash has become a blight on the face of the Tubes. Whether it's noisy and annoying ads, embedded-but-not-linked video, site navigation without a plain HTML version, or malware-pushing securityless redirects, Flash has earned its rightful place in /dev/null.
Not on my BlackBerry (Score:5, Insightful)
Web Survey (Score:1, Insightful)
According to the latest "Market Share" survey [hitslink.com] Windows, Mac and Linux users combined represent more than 99% of the web users. Flash is available on all those platforms and more.
But considering that on some platform, users may be dumb enough not to be able to install Flash, that some users may not want to install Flash for its close-sourceness this number could very well just above 98%. I mean that's a shame Adobe are lying with those numbers and should apologize to everyone for making up numbers so easily.
You are right on the money to have discover such an evil plot.
bad statistical reasoning in summary (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that the sample is a very small fraction of the total population does not make it meaningless.
It may be meaningless for OTHER reasons of course...
Measuring the Wrong Thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying that Flash can be viewed by "99% of internet viewers" is not saying that Flash is on "99% of internet devices." My Centro doesn't have Flash, but my work laptop does, so I'd say "yes" if polled about whether I have access to Flash content. My ratio of internet devices to Flash-capable devices (5:2) doesn't interest Abobe.
Their claim is probably about right.
HTML reaches 100% of all web users (Score:5, Insightful)
You could just go the HTML route...
w3c claims that its HTML platform reaches '100% of interweb viewers,' but a closer look at those statistics suggests it's not exactly all-encompassing. w3c puts HTML-capable web browser penetration at 956 million users out of a total 956 million internet-connected devices, but the total number of PCs is based on a forecast made two years ago. What's more, the number of HTML users is based on a questionable internet survey of just 4,600 people - around 0.0005% of the suggested 956,000,000 total. Is it really possible that 100% penetration could have been reached? Including Linux users? Including users at work? Including brand-new systems?
An embarrassing disgrace for a tech site (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd expect tech readers to have a modicum of statistical sense, but the arguments presented in the summary display an embarrasing ignorance of established statistical techniques. The central limit theorem - one of the first things taught on any stats course - suggests that the sample size is more than adequate, and the researchers have made a serious attempt to take a representative sample across coutries, age groups and genders.
The flaws in the research are more subtle but aren't picked up in the summary. First, beware of any vendor-funded survey - you can guarantee that the although the underlying facts are probably accurate, the interpretation will spun to the point of incredulity. Also, there's probably good reason to believe that people who take part in email surveys aren't representative of the wider population.
But the real problem is that the survey muddles up devices and people: the research discovered that 99% of people can read see Flash animations, but that doesn't remotely mean that 99% of internet-connected devices have Flash. My phone is connected to the innternet, but it certainly can't read Flash files, for example, but I generally read emails on my PC not my phone
Having said that, the results smell about right. Almost all PCs have Flash because it's so easy to install these days - even on Linux./P
Re:Count me... (Score:3, Insightful)
Accessibility (Score:5, Insightful)
How do they survey the people they can't reach or only speak something like Vietnamese?
Re:Ask Google/Yahoo/Baidu (Score:5, Insightful)
Googles Analytics does check for flash player. I'm sure they know. ;)
And let's see...956-947 million for a difference of 9 million users? Let's ignore linux users for a moment... we have no idea how many linux users have flash. OTOH, I'm pretty sure I read that Apple has sold well over 10 million iPhones. We all know iPhones don't have flash. So I'm pretty sure we already know that number is absolute bullshit.
Nice work Adobe.
Re:4,600 is Way More Than Enough (Score:1, Insightful)
How many iPhone users don't have computers?
That's what I thought. Devices =/= viewers. Adobe is claiming VIEWERS. 99% of VIEWERS have flash.
This is the worst Slashdot story in recent memory.
Re:Learn statistics (Score:1, Insightful)
That's the problem right there (Score:1, Insightful)
Without Flash you can't view YouTube, Google video, Vimeo, Fora, etc. etc. etc. These little Flash video players all suck like vacuum cleaners, compared even to Windows Media Player, but without them you won't be watching the videos. It's really frustrating, since the technology for something better is there, now, but everyone sticks with nonfunctional players and a crappy codec.
Re:Count me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, what an insightful comment.
Considering I have developed several RIA applications that run on both the desktop and the web in ActionScript that have nothing embedded save for minor graphics assets to smooth out the loading process and implements full on MVC architectures that utilize Unit Testing ... it's warming to know that I just create mindless bullshit.
Flex, which is a flash based technology and requires the Flash player is becoming every bit as valid a development framework as Java. And works hand in hand with Java on the server-side and through communication protocols such as RTMP and RTMFP.
And while there will always be crap code developed in any language, blaming the tool itself for the ineptitude of developers is nothing short of ignorance.
Why don't you just do us all a favor and just call your service provider and have them disco your service?
Clearly, you must be to the point of a nervous breakdown having to tolerate the mountain of crap that is YouTube and all those millions of blog sites with crappy javascript, poorly formated HTML and links to banner ads to overburdened ad-farms.
Google will let you know for free (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, on my sites (4 medium/smallish commercial sites with around 1000 visits per day each) 45% of users have Flash 10.0 r12, 53% have some version of Flash 9, and 3% have "not set," which is probably split between users with no Flash and users with something that blocks GA's data collection (things such as no script could do this, but I think this is unlikely as noscript has google whitelisted by default).
So, for my sites, the number of users without Flash installed is probably between 0 and 3%. I think it is closer to 3% than 0, but anybody else's guess is as good as mine.
The point is, the overwhelming majority of users have flash.
That tidbit aside, I must say that IMHO using Flash is for anything but movies and games is incredibly bad form. There is no reason whatsoever to have flash menus, navigation or anything else that can be handled in html, css or javascript. Flash destroys accessibility, distracts from your message and is just annoying for visitors.
Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's say Adobe has scewed the results in their favour by a few percent. So it's like 95 or 93%. Bit fat hairy deal. Flash still is the most ubiqious plattform in existance with such frictionless deployment to the end user you'll be hard pressed to find something that even comes close. The closest is Java, and Java Webstart isn't quite there yet. JavaFX isn't truely cross-plattform and I can't think of any other feasable rich client plattform even worth mentioning. And no, Silverlight isn't even a nominee, as Curl, Prisim/XULRunner, SMIL/RealPlayer and a few others have much more penetration.
And since compiling without the official Flash IDE has gotten very easy with MTASC and the Flex SDK I see no reason not to use it for complex RIA projects.
Flash has been the RIA king for at least 10 years now, and unless Sun finsishes the last 20% of JavaFX (true x-plattform is still missing) it will still stay that way for while.
Re:Test YOUR Users (Score:4, Insightful)
Either create a compatible version, or stop asking me to download one.
Yes I know Flash works on Windows XP. And maybe 99% of Internet users use WindowsXP. That is a poor excuse for not working on FreeBSD on UltraSparc hardware. Either you go after the "long tail". or you agravate the nerds. We, the nerds, are currently agravated.
Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm tempted to say "Who cares?" at this point.
Just about the only people without Flash are the people running obscure platforms who *know* they're missing stuff like Flash; people browsing on crap cell phones, who also know they're missing out; and a third group of want-to-be-self-righteous people missing out on purpose so they can troll.
The silly "What about grandmas running Windows 3.1 who don't know how to install plug-ins?" arguments are pointless because people like that are going to have bigger problems than Flash anyway. Hell, if you're still running Windows 98, I wouldn't be surprised if the malware on your machine will install Flash for you.
Re:Count me... (Score:1, Insightful)
embedded-but-not-linked video
You'd rather not see a video at all than have to view source or use a browser extension to add that download link to the page? I'd love to see Flash go away, but until SVG/canvas and <video> with modern codecs (AVC) are widely supported there's no viable alternative. So we'll have to stick with Flash for some more years. I'm still hoping for a usable open-source viewer, that could mitigate some of the problems with Flash.
Re:It's probably pretty close to 99% (Score:3, Insightful)
Regardless, the stat is still meaningless. I have flash installed but I use NoScript to block all of it. I only have it to occasionally watch YouTube vids. I refuse to go to flash sites because they are 95% dogshit. I'm not exaggerating for effect...I honestly feel that way about flash sites. So, just because flash is installed doesn't mean a whole lot if a user blocks the vast majority of it.