Seems the latest stats for December 2006 have just been published here
It’s interesting to see what a difference Russia, India and Taiwan have made to the December 2006 Flash 9 stats. In all other Flash versions for December 2006, the emerging markets lag behind the rest of the world for Flash installs. However, Flash 9 seems to be installed more regularly in the emerging markets that it is in the established markets. I’m sure there’s some whiz bang statistical terms I could be using here – but hopefully this conclusion will suffice: Indian’s love Flash 9. It’s great to see the emerging markets really getting on board with the installation of new technology, makes my life as a flash developer just that bit easier.
I’ve been keeping track of Flash penetration on a handful of my own sites over the last couple of years. This has been made easier with the advent of the free Google Analytics service – but there’s no substitute for a solid timeframe chunk of stats. Here’s an excerpt from the last 3 months (the sites monitored are a wine retailer, my design site – which gets very little traffic, an engineering site, a camper construction site, and a church banking site)
November 2006
Flash 3 – 0.02%
Flash 4 – 0.14%
Flash 5 – 0.27%
Flash 6 – 6.15%
Flash 7 – 13.38%
Flash 8 – 42.84%
Flash 9 – 34.54%
Not Installed – 1.16%
Javascript Disabled – 1.49%
Total – 8861
December 2006
Flash 3 – 0.06%
Flash 4 – 0.04%
Flash 5 – 0.31%
Flash 6 – 5.52%
Flash 7 – 12.43%
Flash 8 – 37.32%
Flash 9 – 42.22%
Not Installed – 0.90%
Javascript Disabled – 1.21%
Total – 7034
January 2007
Flash 3 – 0.03%
Flash 4 – 0.06%
Flash 5 – 0.23%
Flash 6 – 5.39%
Flash 7 – 11.87%
Flash 8 – 32.22%
Flash 9 – 48.00%
Not Installed – 1.11%
Javascript Disabled – 1.10%
Total – 14636
Although my stats differ to Adobe’s (and they always have) it’s good to see a 5% increase in the Flash 9 install month after month – and Flash 9 ain’t even out yet!
Interesting to note from the methodology from the adobe statistics that respondants have to put in quite a bit of effort and time providing background info and set up passwords. The figures are not derived from observation of what all visiters to any paticular site are using.
This of course means that the casual user and those browsing at work (ones least likely to upgrade player)are most likely to be excluded from the survey.
My feeling therefor is that Adobes statistics are more of a PR tool than an aid in determining actual penetration in your users. Stick with your own stats 🙂