Skyfire pulls iPhone app from App Store due to overloaded servers

Just five hours into availability, high demand on Skyfire servers forced them to pull the Skyfire iOS app from the App Store. The company says its working to increase server capacity and will have a new group of apps available "soon." The $US2.99 app brought Flash video, in a roundabout way, to the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Here's how it worked.

The app was a standalone Webkit browser. When used to visit a site with Flash video, the app presents a thumbnail. When tapped, the video is transcoded on Skyfire's servers to HTML5 and streamed to the device. Note that Flash games won't work and Hulu has blocked Skyfire, as it wants people to sign up for the $10/mo. Hulu Plus.

During its short stint of availability, Skyfire became the third most-downloaded paid app. Good luck getting the server demand worked out. You can watch a video of the app after the break.

Ed. note: Download Squad got a hands-on with the app before the servers turned to molten slag and the app was pulled.

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Source: http://money.cnn.com/2010/11/04/technology/skyfire_app_pulle…

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Just five hours into availability, high demand on Skyfire servers forced them to pull the Skyfire iOS app from the App Store. The company...

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Larry

Finally excuse my commets made but got the download!!! And really works finally a app that's worth money.....

November 05 2010 at 7:34 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Larry

Sucks not even in the app store and I guess it didn't work??? From what I heard just like At&t and apple iPhone always some issue or delay, u guys stink!!!!!

November 04 2010 at 8:34 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

TheCastro

Only reason for flash is flash games. I know there are html5 games. But still.

November 04 2010 at 7:44 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

owenmhv

porn is not the reason flash is needed, youporn.com run fine on the iphone, must be HTML5, more research is needed.

November 04 2010 at 4:27 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Luigi

What a scam. Release an app you know you can't support, pocket as much
cash as you can, then get out of town. I can't believe this app was approved.

November 04 2010 at 3:20 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Luigi's comment

Larry

Yep i agree with u just like iPhone 4 they sell it fast than oh lots of flaws!!!!

November 04 2010 at 9:10 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

sider1681

Something Skyfire did not account for, the 'only' reason for flash on the iPhone is... Porn
I'd like to see some stats from Skyfire to confirm that.

November 04 2010 at 2:30 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Bill Hart

I made the mistake of buying this app. Only works on some flash videos and it's slow when it does work. Tried to watch a show from ABC and the frame rate was horrible on Wifi. Tried but would not work for FOX or CBS shows.

November 04 2010 at 2:18 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

pinktech

It doesn't work for ReadyTalk web conferences. Got it hoping to be able to take conference calls away from home.

November 04 2010 at 2:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

cbenitez

So those iphones / ipads owners miss flass after all

November 04 2010 at 1:58 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

4 replies to cbenitez's comment

Stupido

I had a similar idea to this app about a year ago. After chatting with some developer friends it quickly became clear that there was no viable business model - the cost of enough servers - even EC2 ones - transcoding every flash video that iPhone users come across quickly outweighed the revenue stream. Good luck to them...

November 04 2010 at 1:41 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Stupido's comment

Maybe they have secret funding from Adobe ;)

November 04 2010 at 2:04 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply