Skyfire’s Mobile Browser to Play Flash on iOS Devices
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Since the iPad’s launch back in April, many companies have started supporting the web-based HTML5 standard. It’s been somewhat of a slow process, but one that is becoming more prevalent everyday considering the iPad’s success worldwide.
Yes, there are still several sites out there with video content that do not support HTML5 yet. However, many sites have already started supporting it, and more will do the same very soon, with YouTube being the latest example.
There are also companies like Skyfire that believe that mobile browsers should behave just like your normal computer browsers. In other words, Skyfire believes all mobile browsers should not only support HTML5, but also any kind of Flash-based content.
Skyfire released a statement this week saying they are planning to bring Flash to your iOS devices (iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch). They have submitted a mobile browser to Apple’s App Store capable of playing Flash video while adhering to all Apple’s guidelines regarding HTML5 open-video standards across iOS devices.
The way Skyfire will support your iOS devices is by leveraging their cloud-computing technology that allows their servers to transcode Flash content in the cloud into the HTML5 format. The company claims their upcoming mobile browser avoids the concerns raised in Steve Jobs’ recent essay regarding Flash on mobile devices because their technology optimizes Flash for iOS devices improving performance and maximizing battery life while playing video.
The company also claims their technology offers a major enhancement to video data compression by compressing video data by an average of 75%. If this is true, this could certainly help reduce buffer time and make it easier on network providers that would like to avoid any kind of network congestion.
We have not been able to test Skyfire’s upcoming browser. We certainly hope it gets approval from Apple. The following video shows you the Skyfire browser app in action.
