Skyfire for iPad coming soon

Skyfire announced via Twitter that they are working on and will soon release an iPad version of their app.

Keep in mind the app can only do Flash video and not flash games or ads. Skyfire is a proxy browser like Opera Mini and other browsers that have made it onto the App Store.

A bit of history about this app: The current app (that was pulled after a short release time due to their servers being overloaded), which is for the iPhone, costs $2.99 and is available in the US App Store. When Skyfire first announced that they were submitting this app to the App Store, many didn’t think it would be approved.

It was approved and quickly became hugely popular — said to have had $1 million pulled in during the first weekend of sale (minus Apple’s 30% cut). Due to these high download numbers though, their servers did struggle and it was pulled from the store so they could let users get the app in batches. The video below shows the current 2.0 version in action.

For me personally, Flash on mobile devices isn’t anything I feel I am missing. On my desktop, I have flash blocker enabled and I don’t feel I have been to any sites and thought — “oh gee, I wish I had Flash” — so I didn’t get the app. I maybe would have tried it, but at that price I didn’t feel it was something I needed. The sites I go to for video (Tvcatchup.com / iPlayer / filmon.com …) on my iPad don’t use flash anymore either, so there really is no motivator for me to get it.

When it comes to having it on my iPad, I can imagine, as with most iPad apps, it will be even more expensive, so I don’t think I will try it there either — but you may find it useful and want to add that ability to your iPad sooner rather than later in case Apple does pull the app. Also it will be interesting to see how many people do continue to use the app once the hype has died down. Will this prove that people really do miss Flash not being on iOS devices?

Because Skyfire uses cloud-computing, it translates the flash video into the HTML5 format on its servers. This means that initial reasons for not running flash on these devices, such as draining battery life and general performance, are eliminated.

Some current Skyfire features in the 2.0 version for the iPhone that we will surely see in the iPad version:

· Flash Video –The “Video” icon enables users to play millions of Flash videos around the web that otherwise do not play on mobile. This unlocks content trapped behind those error messages with question marks and blue Legos by transcoding the Flash content into HTML5 on Skyfire’s servers.

· Related Content – The “Explore” icon brings the most relevant content on the Internet to a user’s fingertips based on what they are viewing at the time. The Explore button pulls video, buzz, news, images and other sites from the web based on what is on the current page.

Could this mean that with Flash video accessible on both the iPhone and iPad there will be a bit of a ceasefire between Apple and Adobe? Will it compound the idea that Flash on devices isn’t a great idea and that HTML5 is the way to go? Have you already got the iPhone version? Will you also purchase the iPad version?

Article Via 9to5mac