Skyfire proved what everyone outside of Apple have known all along: Apple users want Flash. Just hours after Skyfire offered up a Flash-compatible mobile browser in the App Store, it had to be taken offline because of overwhelming demand.
"We are going to open batches of downloads for new users over the coming days," Skyfire CEO Jeff Glueck said in a blog post last week. "The first batch will be in a few minutes on the Apple App Store. It will be first come, first serve.
"Due to overwhelming demand, we are taking this approach because Skyfire believes a good user experience should come first, and we would rather have fewer, happier customers, and add new users as we can support them. We will open the first batches to U.S. users only, with additional country support to follow shortly."
It took Skyfire just five hours to sell out of its initial batch. Skyfire 2.0 is a full-fledged browser based on the same WebKit core used by Safari. It sidesteps the whole Flash issue by translating Flash videos to the native iPhone media player using the H.264 codec.
Performance based earn-out payments over the next three years could make this deal worth $155 million.
