SkyFire Approved: Flash Coming to the iPhone and iPad.


According to CNN, SkyFire has been approved by Apple and will be in the App Store Thursday morning at 9AM EST.  The app will sell for $2.99.  SkyFire is a mobile web browser which has become known for its ability to play video embedded on web sites with Adobe’s Flash technology.  However, since Flash still isn’t supported on the iPhone, the company invented a clever way for their browser  to play Flash video on the iPhone and iPad.

SkyFire created a cloud technology which allows the browser to translate Flash videos in real-time to the Apple approved HTML5 standard which means they adhere to all of Apple’s video and browser guidelines.  SkyFire sure looks impressive (as you can see in the video demo above), their technology enables the browser to compress video data by about 75 percent on average.  This type of compression makes it easier to stream videos without buffering and also saves battery life.

Unfortunately, as CNN makes note of, SkyFire will not play video from Hulu.  It also will not be able play other Flash elements like games, or let users view websites that rely on Flash for navigation.  SkyFire is geared mostly towards flash video content which is still found on several sites throughout the web.  In fact, Jeffrey Glueck, Skyfire’s CEO claims that there are millions of sites out there which SkyFire’s flash-capable browser will benefit iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad users.

It’s also important to make note that Glueck does stress the fact that on secured sites like online banking, Skyfire turns off its enhanced Web services so that those sites are rendered on users’ phones and not on Skyfire’s servers.