In just it’s first five hours of it’s initial release, the app did amazingly well. Enthusiasm for the app was so great that it overwhelmed their server’s capacity to deliver video at a reasonable rate. In those five hours, Skyfire became the top grossing app and the third highest paid app overall. A pretty impressive feat none the less. In the past, there have been many eagerly anticipated apps, but when Skyfire launched, there was no way for the company to know just how popular their app would become. “The user experience was performing well for the first few hours, but as the surge continued, the peak load on our servers and bandwidth caused the video experience to degrade,” said Robert on the Skyfire website.
For those of you who were lucky enough to download Skyfire while it was still available, you probably were impressed with its ease of use and video quality. The ability to watch flash videos on your iPhone as opposed to having to go to your computer probably came in pretty handy. Later in the day though, if you opened the app, you were greeted with the following:
Since then, many have been unable to watch any Flash videos. On the Skyfire website, the company says it is working to increase its capacity to meet demand. Hopefully they have generated enough income to purchase a few more servers and will be able to get them up and running quickly. With so many iOS users eager for more video content on their portable devices, hopefully the company can resolve all of its technical issues and get the app back in the App Store quickly.
The Skyfire app was pulled not for the violation of terms, but because it was just TOO popular – a pretty unprecedented event in the history of the App Store. Flash may be on its way out, according to Jobs, but if the success of this app is any indication, Flash will be with us for a while longer. Now if only Hulu would get on board and not lock every iPhone user out of their site, many would be happy.
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Authors: TechHead