Slashdot Mirror
Is Flash Really On 99% of Net Devices?
Barence writes "Adobe claims that its Flash platform reaches '99% of internet viewers,' but a closer look at those statistics suggests it's not exactly all-encompassing. Adobe puts Flash player penetration at 947 million users out of a total 956 million internet-connected devices, but the total number of PCs is based on a forecast made two years ago. What's more, the number of Flash users is based on a questionable internet survey of just 4,600 people — around 0.0005% of the suggested 956,000,000 total. Is it really possible that 99% penetration could have been reached? Including Linux users? Including users at work? Including brand-new systems?"
Please, this "how can just 4600 people represent so many" comment is something any college-educated person should know better than to say. Provided the sample was drawn randomly from a representative pool of users, 4600 people is more than adequate, giving a sampling error of about 2%.
[I also posted a portion of this on the original site but thought it might also be useful here.]
Being a Technical Evangelist for Adobe I frequently get questioned about our published statistics. My response is that you should always test YOUR user base before you make a decision about building on any technology. And in most cases when companies do their own testing the results are within one percent of our published numbers. This is true for enterprise's, SMBs, media companies, etc. But occasionally I hear about some demographic where the numbers are totally off. For instance, if your user base is still working on green screens then you will find lower Flash Player penetration numbers there.
I think Slashdot should publish their stats about their users. It would be interesting to see what the Flash Player penetration is like with this demographic - especially considering I sometimes see Flash banner ads on Slashdot.
-James (Adobe)
If you've already got (and like) NoScript you wouldn't want flashblock.
For people that don't have NoScript and don't want to deal with constantly managing what is and isn't blocked, flashblock is a nice choice. It doesn't mess with any non-flash page rendering and it's easy to see what you're missing or allow permanently if you like.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
/. should not be a forum for perpetrating common ignorance, such as the comment,
"What's more, the number of Flash users is based on a questionable internet survey of just 4,600 people â" around 0.0005% of the suggested 956,000,000 total. Is it really possible that 99% penetration could have been reached?"
They really needed to survey just 1,000 people to get a statistically meaningful survey.
It does not pass the smell test because it leaves out a number of important devices we know to exist on the Internet (for example, the iPhone).
The problem is almost certainly sample bias. 1,000 data points is significantly relevant if your sample is truly random and not skewed towards a particular subgroup. Sample bias means that your mechanism for picking who you sampled would be more likely to pull data points from a specific subgroup. For example, a methodology that discouraged responses from people on mobile devices.
As I mentioned earlier, if I've read it right, Adobe claims 9 million devices that don't run flash. Apple has sold over 10 million iphones.
Sounds like "Myth Busted" to me.
Here's the quote from Adobe's site...
Adobe ® Flash ® Player is the world's most pervasive software platform, used by over 2 million professionals and reaching 99.0% of Internet-enabled desktops in mature markets as well as a wide range of devices
It's interesting that Adobe defines Flash as a "software platform". A javascript-enabled browser could also be defined as such- which would make Adobe's claims of "most pervasive" false, since there are many sites which use javascript but not flash.
Mature Markets include US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Japan.
Hm, seems like they left out a few ...
Of course, they just want to make people to feel comfortable paying top dollar for their products. (And as someone faced with buying a copy of Flash or Adobe CS4 soon, Holy Cow it's expensive!)
The use of two year-old data for projecting the current Internet population may or may not be questionable, but there's nothing at all wrong with extrapolating from sample of 4600 to a population of one billion -- or any size.
It's a curious result of probability theory that, assuming your sample is truly random (which is HARD to achieve!), the sample size you need is independent of the size of the population you're examining. It doesn't matter whether there are a million, hundred million or hundred trillion Internet-connected computers, a random sample of 4600 is equally good.
Yes, this is counterintuitive, like so much else in probability theory.
When choosing an appropriate sample size what matters is the rarity of the trait you're searching for, the margin of error you want to allow, and the degree of confidence you want to have in your result. It's an interesting circularity that you need to know how common computers without Flash are in order to determine how large a sample you need to determine how common computers without Flash are. In practice it isn't a big deal, though. You guess at your answer, compute the required sample size, perform your sampling operation, then see what answer the sample provided. If it's not close to your assumed answer, then you use the sample as the basis of a new assumption and compute a required sample size for your desired level of confidence. If needed, you sample some more. Usually, though, you can make a good enough initial guess that one round is sufficient.
This is why pollsters can give 3% error margins and 95% confidence intervals for voter preferences even though there are many millions of voters and they only ask a thousand or so. The fact that getting good random samples is so hard explains why pollsters nevertheless do get it wrong from time to time. But asking more people wouldn't help, since the additional samples would likely have the same unknown bias as the first thousand -- or perhaps if they were chosen a different way they'd have a different unknown bias.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I wish people would understand sample size before claiming it as a weak point.
A sample is by definition a small slice of a population.
Sample size is not a weak or strong aspect of the analysis based on what its ratio is to the entire population, it is weak or strong based on the confidence level you end up with.
Example: If you have a sample size of 4300 people and your resultant confidence level is 99%, then even if you have a total population of 6 billion people, your sample size is perfectly fine. If, however, your confidence level is 95%, the statistical results should be questioned as to their accuracy wrt the entire population.
I don't know what the confidence level of Adobe's survey was, but the summary should not be throwing its results into question based on the sample size to total population ratio, it makes the person sound stupid.
With noscript I block Google Analytics and flash. This would put a bit of skew in the data.
There is a 64 bit version for Linux.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Wrong. All you need is a browser that HTML5 compliant. Safari on iPhone, iPod touch, Mac OS X and Windows can already play video in this manner. Firefox and Opera should also support this method pretty soon, with Internet Explorer 15 also supporting it around 2154.
That sounds like it is more of an issue with who coded the Flash app you are looking at. Either that or your machine is broke. Most if not all flash sites run fine on my older single core machine with 1gb of ram.
Because Adobe Flash does not exist on FreeBSD, the userbase here with FreeBSD doesn't have Adobe Flash.
You should have read the article.
It WAS about flash enabled devices. The survey used embedded flash, with "can you see this" type questions. That survey was meant to devine the percentage of internet enabled DEVICES.
It wasn't a "do you own a device somewhere that can play flash content?" survey.
So is the iPhone, sir.
But my G1 is in fact a net device. It is part of the population Adobe was describing.
Next...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Not only is the iPhone completely Adobe Flash-free, but iPhones also make up around 50% of mobile web traffic worldwide.
[citation needed]
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.