RSSAdobe claims 100 million AIR installs...Where's Silverlight?
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published January 29, 2009, 10:50 AM
Yesterday at a conference in Japan, Adobe announced it has received an independent assessment of the worldwide installed base for its Web platforms. A Millward Brown survey estimates that Flash has been installed on 99% of the world's Internet-enabled PCs, leading Adobe to estimate that Flash Player 10 by itself will break the 80% penetration mark by the end of Q2 2009.
Some 100 million PCs are believed to have successfully installed Adobe's AIR runtime platform -- and by "successfully," the company means, it's running and active and without trouble. That's based on the company's own statistics about downloads.
But what does that mean relative to the competition? Microsoft hasn't been specific about the relative penetration of its own Silverlight platform. However, the independent Web site RIAStats.com has been displaying a running tally of installations of rich Internet application platforms based on traffic among tracked sites -- currently numbering over 900,000 in the last 30 days alone. Nearly 50% of sites tracked have Flash Player 9 installed, with over 45% having Flash 10. Meanwhile, only 15.2% of sites have Silverlight version 2 installed, and 2.29% with Silverlight 1. That's about 157,500 Silverlight machines spotted.
But if those percentages are accurate relative to Adobe, that would mean about 18.3 million Silvelight installations worldwide by comparison. Let's see if Microsoft can corroborate that figure.
@mossyblog,
You talk alot of BS for someone with a supposed real job title in every post. You're only doing worse for Microsoft's already horrible PR. Your stats are made up (i'm going to go ahead and say 70% of them are made up..see how easy that is?) and you clearly dont know the different between AIR and Silverlight. Adobe AIR is flash for the desktop if you will. It is the ubiquitous technology known as flash but brough to windows, linux and mac. Silverlight is still browser only thus making it the same as flash, not AIR.
Next, why should anyone really pick Silverlight over Flash/Flex, I dont care what you say, I have years of experience with Visual Studio but Adobe's Flex Builder is right up there with it...It has 90% of Studios functionality plus a few extra features that Studio doesnt have. Yea, .NET is my favourite server-side technology and probably the best but guess what, Flash/Flex RIA's can talk directly to your.NET backend with a beautiful little bridging technology known as WebORB so I'm not missing the power of Visual Studio.
However you may say, why not just use Silverlight then. Well, Silverlight adoption is terrible. I laugh at your "1 in 4 PC's has Silverlight"..you lie. I've only come across 1 or 2 Microsoft sites (outta 5000) that uses it's own technology. Why would I leave flash for silverlight, when Microsoft cant even find developers to do their sites in thier own technologies. The whole thing is laughable. And then they want people to take them seriously...It's too little too late.
God help you if Adobe ever improves on flashes web service capabilities.....Silverlight will have no chance in hell, and you will be out of a job
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|99% of Internet-connected PCs? The European Union should be filling their lawsuit over this monopoly any day now...
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|@FRautenbach:
Are you kidding? The implementation of both Flash & Silverlight within the browser uses ActiveX housed within the browsers sandbox. As for practical business use, it's extremly cost effective to produce line of business applications using the power of Silverlight and both technologies can adhere to the wear and tear of day to day use.
I think before you cast aside these technologies you spend more time doing the home work on the said technologies.
Sorry but a lot of people around the world disagree with you.
Scott Barnes
Rich Platforms Product Manager
Microsoft.
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|There will always be two camps. Those that develop in Visual Studio and want vast libraries and tools will go with Silverlight. Those that need a fast, responsive, & light application, love Eclipse and Open Source will go with Flex/AIR.
The main consideration for developers to side with one platform or another is job potential. There are tens of millions of jobs for .NET developers and only millions of jobs for Flex/AIR. So, there are more jobs out there seeking .NET and Silverlight. However, there are also 3 developers for every .NET job out there whereas there are 6 jobs for every Flex/AIR developer. So the job is more likely to be outsourced to a developing nation in .NET than in Flex/AIR.
Overall, Microsoft misread the Internet and has had to claw back it position as a major player in the Internet arena. The good news is that Microsoft has billions of dollars, the bad news is it will cost billions of dollars to gain market share where it will only cost millions of dollars for Adobe and Google to keep their market share dominance. The question now is to whether Balmer feels it is worth trying to win the RIA Internet turf war or concede to Adobe and Google. Silverlight 2 hasn't won like Xbox 360 has in the console arena. Slow performance and slow adaptation in websites isn't helping. However, should Silverlight 3 not make a significant improvement, then Silverlight will go the way of the Zune.
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|People install the Flash player not because they want to view some fancy animated logo, but because they need to watch videos on YouTube and other similar sites. They will install Silverlight if it does the job better or if it is the only alternative.
BTW. Corporate PCs usually don't have Flash or Silverlight installed for this exact reason.
Flash and Silverlight are both actually compiled applications, similar to normal EXE files, but with better security. Unfortunately, on Windows, they are both implemented as ActiveX controls, so I strongly advise against using either of these technologies for any kind of serious business use.
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|Think in this way that Silverlight is just on version 2 and it is half of version 9.
Anyone can guess on Silverlight 9.
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|I don't like Adobe AIR because it behaves like hidden install - whenyou install Adobe Reader, there is no mention of Adobe AIR in typical installation steps, however, it magivally appears in "Installed programs". In this behaviour it is so similar to some malicious software, at least I think so. I don't want anything to be installed on my computer if I'm not asked for it.
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|1) Adobe claim 99% of PC's have Flash installed whilst at the same time they also claim 18million people per day on AVERAGE are installing Flash. Given there's approx 1.4 billion people online, do the math on how well the Milward Brown survey is architected.
2) 100million PC's of known installations don't equate necessarily to 100million unique pc's. It's a very loose figure to throw out there as you're not seperating the unique from replicated. Furthermore they've stated they don't know where the installs come from, and given Acrobat Reader + CS4 pushes Adobe AIR as part of the installation, its somewhat ambitious at this point to assume 100million are based off the developer ecosystem.
3) Assuming that 100million was unique and absolute, that's roughly
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|Yeah, I'm really going to trust claims like this from a MS Silverlight evangelist. 1 out of 4 PCs connected online? On Vista systems, maybe. And only because the people using Vista forgot to block its install in Windows Update. How much of Silverlight works under Firefox? Or Safari? Or any browser that isn't an insecure, bloated POS like IE?
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|Scott, thank you for your timely and thoughtful response. That definitely gives us a lot to think about with regard to comparing the two platforms.
-Scott Fulton
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|As a developer that uses Adobe AIR and MS WPF + Silverlight
My 2c is that WPF+Silverlight is being used 'now!' by us to develop Line-Of-Business applications (in the 'real' world!) We have used AIR extensively and found it not yet fit for LOB use!
Steve Thornton
Thornton Software UK
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|@Skawt -
Yeah, and we're supposed to listen to someone who knows absolutely nothing about Silverlight. You probably don't even know the difference between Flash and AIR given your comment.
Silverlight works in Firefox fine - I'm using it right now. It works fine on my Mac (FF/Safari) and on my PC (IE, Firefox and Safari). So spare us the ignorance.
Silverlight is still relatively new, and if MS does its job right, it'll definitely give AIR/Flash a good run. I develop on a PC using Visual Studio and with all due respect, comparing this tool to almost any other developer IDE is like night and day, no contest. Yes, I know there are those who wouldn't even touch it, but if you dig deep, the rationale isn't rational at all - it's "religion", kinda what Skawt is spouting.
Simply put the real power of Silverlight is in its Visual Studio following, and that's quite a big following. So Scott, if you're on still this thread, keep it up...and please no "forks" in the roadmap....I'm mentioning this because I do have a bone to pick with MS - unrelated but is a big barrier to adoption: Azure and it's Vista/Server 2008 requirement for the SDK (re: no XP)...all things being equal (no upside for VS on XP), and given the maturity of competitive offering from Amazon, it becomes a no-brainer - not in Azure's favor.
For all the religious zealots:
I develop on the PC and do creative work on Mac. So that means VS on my PC ws, everything Adobe (CS), Apple (FCS, etc.) on my Mac Pro. I'm a platform atheist. I use tools that get the job done.
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|@mossyblog
I made RIAStats.com, and both of your assertions in 4) of your comment are completely bogus.
First, most of the technology specific sites that have included the RIAStats script are SILVERLIGHT bloggers! In fact, Flash/Flex specific sites/blogs represent less than 5% of the traffic collected.
Second, anyone with eyes can see the option at the top of RIAStats that says "Include statistics from sites specifically about RIA technologies". Which is by default disabled. That means that no technology specific site traffic is included in stats shown. This applies to Adobe and Microsoft technologies.
Third, If you are going to claim that Ted Patrick from Adobe said my site is invalid, you need to post a supporting link. This he said, she said business shouldn't happen in a professional environment.
Finally, you do not have the right to spread bogus information like this. Especially about something that I've put a lot of my time in to. I've worked very hard to make RIAStats.com a fair and balanced service. There's no way you could know the majority of sites that collect statistics for RIAStats, because I havn't ever made that list public. You made out right fabrications.
If you've got concerns about RIAStats, you can contact me directly at DreamingWell.com. I look forward to hearing from you, especially before you continue with your smear campaign.
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|@EdSF:
Whether I know anything about SilverLight or AIR isn't the point I was making. @mossyblog is a Microsoft employee whose job it is to scour the internet for Adobe Flash/AIR postings and respond with typical MS FUD in order to promote SilverLight. You will not see any unbiased information coming from him. I would only trust a third-party review that had no vested interest in either platform. Reading the comments, it's pretty easy to tell where people's sympathies lie.
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|When Adobe is installing AIR as a component of Adobe Acrobat Reader, yeah, that number is going to be artificially high. Just like Microsoft's sales figures for Vista are very high because it's installed on 99% of OEM built PC's. You can bet their retail box sales aren't anywhere near as impressive, just like standalone AIR installs are probably pretty meager in comparison as well.
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|Go here and hang out for a few seconds:
http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/
there's an install for Silverlight 2 and there's also a pop-up.
But to be fair, google around for a Silverlight review, then make up your mind.
Adobe "offers" to install Air with any free download, I didn't realize it was a popularity contest.
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|I was surfing the net at work the other day and came upon a site that required Silverlight.
Not having administrative privileges, I couldn't install Silverlight.
So I didn't get to view the site, and had to search for a competing website that didn't require Silverlight.
I think competition to Flash is good, but take note web developers!
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|So let me get this straight. You want competition yet you don't want to give that competition a chance by installing it. How is Microsoft going to compete if no one will give it a try? As far as I know you can't install Flash without admin rights as well.
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|Ultimately content is really what drives adoption. Flash 9 adoption was mostly driven by Youtube. Even Microsoft themselves have decided to use Flash for their Soapbox video service, announce Vista via Flash video (not Silverlight). As a .NET developer who happens to have years of experience with Flash and Flex, I can only say Silverlight still needs iteration(s) to be mature. Hopefully content developers would help drive the product forward.
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|Flash is installed by default on all windows machines per a licensing agreement with Adobe.
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|I'd have to say that's a lie. Every new install of Windows I've ever seen requires you to install flash in order to view any websites using flash, because it doesn't come as standard. However, some OEM manufacturers like Sony and Dell might include it was part of all of their excess crap they include, but a clean install of Windows includes no flash at all.
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|Nope.
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