Adobe has announced that they’ve recorded 100 million successful installations of Adobe AIR, the company’s cross-platform runtime environment for RIAs, at the same time boasting that the newest version of Adobe Flash Player (10) was installed on over half of computers worldwide in just the first two months of its release.
The company made the announcement at the Adobe MAX Japan event, notably less than one year after the official release of Adobe AIR.
Adobe says the 100 million mark for Adobe AIR installs is a minimum for the total install base of the AIR runtime (read: they think it’s actually more than that) since they only count the ones that are deemed 100% successful (i.e. they can be confirmed by code running after the installation). As for developers building Web applications using the Adobe Flash Platform, the company claims that in the last 12 months there have been over 1 million downloads of the AIR software development kit (SDK), open source Flex framework and Adobe Flex Builder.
Based on the results of a Millward Brown survey, Adobe also boasts that Flash Player 10 has been installed on 55% of computers worldwide, and they expect to surpass 80% penetration by next quarter. In total, no less than 99% of internet-enabled desktops are said to have at least some version of Flash Player installed. You can see the percentages broken down by version here but keep in mind that the numbers come from Adobe.
As we’ve noted before, Flash Player is still struggling to make the jump to mobile phones.
For the sake of comparison, the last time Microsoft shared numbers on its Flash Player competitor Silverlight was when the company released Silverlight 2 in October 2008. They didn’t publish actual install numbers, but said the adoption rate was nearing 50 percent in some countries and 30 percent in the U.S.
Going back to Adobe AIR, in a blog post the company’s Group Manager, Flash Platform Product Marketing Adrian Ludwig says that the vast majority of installations are driven by applications rather than people going to Adobe.com to install the runtime environment.
Ludwig cites TweetDeck, Twhirl, AOL Top 100 Videos and eBay Desktop among the most popular applications (full list). I personally use AIR powered desktop applications Twhirl, Yammer, Google Analytics Reporting Suite, Finetune Desktop and Snackr the most.
What about you?
100 Million! Whoa…
My brother is one of them
HUndred millions – how many of those include multiple installations
WOW! Now that is what they call success of a product, I wish my service here http://www.yout...o-for-your.html could perform like that.
http://www.youtechno.info
Good , a landmark
Check out our AIR based collaboration and task management application at: http://www.konolive.com
I particularly love the destroyFlickr AIR App!
What do they mean by an installation of Adobe AIR? The AIR runtime itself or an Adobe AIR programme?
Not entirely clear to me.
How would you run AIR applications without the AIR runtime?
They mean the runtime. I don’t think they can tell how many AIR apps installed.
Cool!! I love AOL Top100 videos app!!!
check this out
http://www.adobeairflip.co.uk
Now if only AIR would run on mobile phones…
All hype about this seems a way too superficial. At first developers were trying to create rich web based apps using ActiveX and Java Applets, trying to write once, run everywhere with Java, and here comes the next toy to play with – Adobe Air. What’s coming up next?!
@Jane McCarty
Who knows?! But it seems that AIR delivery to the expectations for many people, developers or users! So there is a big chance to be more than a hype! Would be anything bad if that is the case?
Common users just get interface that looks and works differently from their native OS they got used to, lazy developers have got another tool for developing something that runs somehow everywhere with no specific functionality of any particular OS. Adobe? Just aims to build another cross platform OS, like all these guys: Gears, Prism, JavaFX hoping to replace Microsoft and Windows one day?
@Jane McCarty
Disclaimer: I work for Adobe (forgot to point this in my previous comment).
Regarding your comment “[...]users get interface that looks and works differently[...]“. Actually it is up to developer to implement the application UI. AIR has support for things like desktop tray or dock icons, a developer can choose to use the underlying OS window chrome, and thus the app will have min/max/close buttons and menus as you expect on that OS. So my point is you are not right on this one.
Regarding your second comment, well, I must say I have trust in developers and I don’t think they are bunch of lazy people (I must confess I am a developer too). Many of them keep coming with good ideas. The frameworks just help them to do it more efficiently or to add something new …
@Jane
If your going to cite history, it helps to know something about it. Let’s take a look at why applets failed:
1. Criminal acts of FRAUD committed by Microsoft, for which Bill Gates had he not been a genocidal NWO puppet, would undoubtedly have been prosecuted under RICO and be serving time in a Federal Prison.
2. The level of mental retardation in software development at the time made most developers incapable of understanding a well designed API like Swing. Most applet developers came from a Visual Basic background, and it is impossible to understand Swing if you don’t understand OOP.
3. Shift of focus by most Java developers and companies that support Java (Sun, IBM, Oracle) away from the desktop towards more important enterprise + web development circa 1998.
Now that Java rules the (meaningful) world, you can expect a return to the trivial (e,g. blueray, the desktop, etc)
test commenting using FacebookConnect.
wow.. that’s too many… got one adobe here,,
BFD. AIR comes bundled with Adobe Reader which, last time I checked…was pretty freaking popular. I manually uninstall AIR and Acrobat.com on every machine I upgrade to Reader 10. Death to bundled garbage like this.
I am a TweetDeck user. I love it. We built Kayanta (http://www.kayanta.com) as a Flex/AIR application with the expectation that AIR penetration would mirror Flash. So far so good. Better to be lucky AND good, perhaps.
100M bundled installations
99.99M picking dust
Applications driven installs are more than the installs from Adobe.com. Understand this is a nice way to promote your products, using Active X
that doesn’t mean anything, I had it installed at least 10 times on a single cpu. It also comes with the CS4 suite.
This aint mean people use it.
Really starting to be a great platform that it seems a lot of companies are using. I’m really glad that it works on Ubuntu.
Clearly you haven’t been using Linux for more than a few weeks. It crashes Firefox 2/3 on Linux all the time.
The mobile space is where Flash will undoublty face the biggest competition.
Microsoft has a Mobile OS and a mobile framework to run apps. Silverlight Mobile will be the full version of Silverlight on mobile…not some Flash Lite (I know Adobe is changing that). Couple that with the Azure Clouse OS (you will write an application ONCE and it will work on the desktop, web and mobile leveraging the Azure client).
I seriously don’t think Flash can compete at all in cross functionality other than in performance, acceleration and their huge lead in market share.
This is because it is bundled with adobe reader 9 by default
I agree with xoxo. It’s because AIR comes in Acrobat Reader and the like. You have to actively seek the installer that doesn’t have it, which is on Adobe’s FTP site. Doesn’t mean anything.
Missing from this space is an ad network to serve ads to AIR applications.
Google Ad Manager and open X won’t serve ads to AIR and I’ve yet to find a network that will.
I built http://popling.net as a way to “learn without studying” on Adobe Air. It was the perfect platform to build the app with, but the low hanging monetization fruit (network ads and adsense) doesn’t exist on the platform.
Anyone know of a network or adserver that specializes in RIA?
So, if we (falsely) assume that these were a hundred million unique installations then that means Adobe is now running on a hundred million devices, which means that they only have about 1,900,000,000 more to go before they catch up with where Java was five years ago (can’t find any recent numbers sorry).
And yet, the world is still waiting on someone to develop a sophisticated application using Flex/Flash. I suspect they shall be waiting indefinitely.
Uh, did anyone miss that AIR is INCLUDED in all Acrobat Reader installs? You don’t have a choice to install it. It’s like installing QT or iTunes. You can’t have one without the other.
100 million installs?
Where did you get that preposterous hypothesis? Did Steve tell you that perchance? Steve!
haha, made my morning, thanks. What a hilarious misunderstanding.
I’ve actually probably made up 2 million of those installs testing our Air products
Actually, we only count the first installation of the runtime. The 100 million is only for runtime installs and not for application installs. So even though you installed 2 million apps, you are only counted once in this number.
Serge Jespers
Adobe
Yeah, I told him. Sigh… What kind of name is Steve anyhow?
I have been really happy with the adobe air platform and applications. a few quirks here and there but overall I’m not really surprised by its success.
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100million installs only equals 7% of PC’s connected.
I also noted Adobe didn’t list Acrobat Reader as a reason for the installs? misleading much?
7% growth over a year is actually extremly low all things considered.
Not only is AIR (and flex) cross-platform runtime, it’s also cross-platform development. i switched from a windows machine to a mac book pro when i switched from developing .NET apps to Flex apps and i don’t want to go back to win or win development…so die silverlight DIE!!! (just a friendly comment from a developer haha)
on the lighter note, here’s my fav AIR app …
http://www.pandora.com/desktop
long live pandora!!!!
Any actual dev who has actually looked at both Flash and Silverlight can tell you that Silverlight owns Flash. C# and visual studio vs. Actionscript and Flash CS. Not hard to decide which one of those is better if you’ve actually used them.
The only reason Adobe managed to get that many installs is because they sneak it in when you are installing Acrobat Reader 9.
I never even knew what AIR was, nor was I given an option to opt out of it during my Acrobat Reader 9 install, yet here it is on my computer.
I’m currently in the process of trying to get Acrobat.com and AIR off of my bloody computer, but Adobe is making it really difficult.
Apparently, you can’t uninstall AIR until AFTER you have uninstalled Acrobat.com. So now I’m faced with having to reinstall AIR so I can get all of this crap off of my computer.
Oh, did I mention that the reason these products are being exorcised from my computer is because after it installs itself onto your computer, Acrobat.com drops itself into your Start Up Files folder, and insists on opening its explorer window full of install files every time I start up my computer? How’s that for obnoxious? Yet another wonderful feature for Acrobat.com
I love Adobe products, but I can’t believe they have made such a major f#@k up with their install files. Sure hope they fix it for future Adobe Reader installers.
Hi, thought this may be of interest: Adobe AIR – what’s with the high CPU load, http://tinyurl.com/aircpu
am part of the 1 million..
The title should be:
Adobe AIR Is Flying: 100 Million Installations UNACCOUNTED For
Since the user HAS NO WAY TO OPT-OUT OF ADOBE “AIR” AT ADOBE READER INSTALL TIME.
Adobe, stop trying to reinvent the wheel. Software is not supposed to be “new” IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE RELIABLE. Those of you who are LITE users of adobe products think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. Those of us who have to maintain networks have seen countless buggy behavior from adobe products over the years and a LACK of serious competent technical PHONE support.
Quote “There’s no physical way to opt out of Adobe AIR during Acrobat Reader installation.” Wow, that says it all. More software arrogance. Quote “What is the argument against installing AIR if you are user of adobe reader?”
It’s called CHOICE you 1d10t and it’s called KEEPING A COMPUTER UNDER CONTROL AND PROTECTED FROM BUGGY BLOATED UN-NEEDED SOFTWARE.
*** TO BUNDLE ADOBE “AIR” WITH ACROBAT READER WITHOUT ANY USER OPT-OUT OPTION SETS AN UNPRECEDENTED LEVEL OF CORPORATE ARROGANCE ***
Quote “There’s no physical way to opt out of Adobe AIR during Acrobat Reader installation.” Wow, that says it all. More software arrogance. Quote “What is the argument against installing AIR if you are user of adobe reader?”
How about the fact that everytime I visit a site which activates Adobe Air.. my cpu load goes thru the roof and in 5 minutes I am getting warnngs about my cpu exceeding 200deg F.? NOTHING else has ever caused such a problem on my machine.
Any actual dev who has actually looked at both Flash and Silverlight can tell you that Silverlight owns Flash. C# and visual studio vs. Actionscript and Flash CS. Not hard to decide which one of those is better if you’ve actually used them.
==== Agreed!