[thelist] survey says...

[Adam Fahy]

> Morgan Kelsey wrote:

> Buried, and i mean *BURIED* on macromedia's site you may be lucky
> enough to find
> this whitepaper:
> http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/survey/whitepaper/page11.
> html#appendixII
> (watch the wrap)
>
> sure sure, those stats are only updated as of september, but it
> shows that the 98%
> number thrown around all the time is really nothing more that
> 100% bullcrap.
>
> funny about whitepaper, brown shows up on it real good....

Well, I don't know what anyone did to you to warrant such remarks, but you
could have just looked directly at the reference cited in the HFI article,
to see where the author was coming from:

<< 3.
http://developer.viewpoint.com/developerzone/docs/vmp_distribution.pdf >>

AFA whether this information was "buried" in the Macromedia site, I did a
quick Google search [flash player distribution site:www.macromedia.com] and
found this pretty easily:

http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetra
tion.html

Also, there is a Flash FAQ on their site:

http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/open/faq/

Which lists, "How many people have Macromedia Flash Player installed?" as
the second question:

http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/open/faq/#1_2

That entry points to:

http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/

Where you can learn about Flash and Shockwave player penetration:

http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/shockwaveplayer/
http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/flashplayer/

They (Macromedia) say, "In September 2002, NPD Research, the parent company
of MediaMetrix, conducted a study to determine what percentage of Web
browsers have Macromedia Flash preinstalled. The results show that 97.8% of
Web users can experience Macromedia Flash content without having to download
and install a player."

True, 97.8% is not 98%.  And when you're dealing with such a large amount of
people, the difference may well be quite significant to you.  But if your
primary concern is precision, I feel you may be better served by noting that
not many people are developing sites in Flash v2-3 (97.8%, 97.6% [US]), or
even v4 (96.3%); developers would much rather use Flash v5(92.0%) or Flash
v6 (53.0%).

At the same time, look at how quickly the stats have changed regarding the
adoption of the Flash 6 (MX) player: March 2002 - 3.2%; June 2002 - 30.2%;
September 2002 - 53.0%.  It seems that for the most part users aren't
adverse to Flash, or to upgrading their player to use it; in fact, they
upgrade at an extremely rapid pace.  This leads to the question, who is
represented by that last 2-5% of users, which seems to be the ceiling for
viewing Flash content?