SkyFire Pulls In Another Million Bucks With The Launch Of SkyFire For iPad
Up until recently, the revenue model for SkyFire's smartphone browser (you know, the one that converts Flash Video on-the-fly for playback on handsets that otherwise could never touch it?) wasn't too clear.
Context & Ripple Effects
SkyFire's arc over the winter of 2010–11 has been unusually fast for a third-party mobile browser. Apple approved its iOS app in November 2010 because it sidesteps Flash entirely — the server-side conversion of Flash video to HTML5 meant no forbidden runtime on the device — and the iPhone version then pulled in nearly a million dollars in its first App Store weekend.
The company kept the cadence going: SkyFire 3.0 shipped for Android in late November, and the $4.99 iPad build launched December 22. This latest million, booked alongside the iPad rollout, answers the question MobileCrunch flagged about the revenue model — the conversion engine is being sold as a paid download, twice over, on two Apple platforms plus Android.
First-order effects
- SkyFire now has roughly two seven-figure sales events within about ten weeks — iPhone launch and iPad launch — turning an unclear business model into a demonstrated one: users pay up front for Flash video playback their devices cannot otherwise deliver.
- Apple gets the practical benefit of Flash web video on iOS without ever licensing or permitting Flash itself, since all the conversion happens off-device.
Second-order effects
- Adobe faces a widening gap: every device class where SkyFire sells is a class where users have shown they'll pay to route around missing native Flash, weakening the argument that Flash support is a must-have feature for handset and tablet buyers.
- Rival mobile browsers (Opera and others competing in the same App Store shelf) come under pressure to match the transcoding capability, since a paid browser outselling free ones reframes what users will pay for in this category.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, server-side format conversion becomes a standard layer of mobile browsing rather than a novelty — accelerating the shift toward HTML5 video delivery regardless of what content owners encode in, since any Flash stream can be re-rendered for any screen.
- App Store gatekeeping paradoxically creates a paid-product niche: Apple's restrictions on runtimes let third-party browsers charge for capabilities Safari doesn't ship, an incentive structure other platforms don't offer.
The trend: Mobile browsing is splitting into a tier of paid apps whose value comes from doing what the platform won't — here, converting Flash video to HTML5 on the fly as Apple keeps Flash off its devices.