This is a quick glance at the worldwide usage of Flash Player across all versions.  A look at the graph below will tell you that the Adobe Flash Player is used on an approximate 96% of all Internet-connected computers!¹  This is a staggering statistic.  A closer look at the graph will show that the Flash Player has a significantly higher presence than Windows Media Player, a difference in the area of hundreds of thousands of users.  And considering that Windows Media Player is bundled with every version of Microsoft Windows, then that’s quite a feat.

Comparison

In addition to the Windows Media Player comparison that I mentioned above, I would also like to compare it to PHP and AJAX.  As with the previous post, I am choosing these because they are some of the most popular Internet technologies today.  Again, I will mention that the measure for PHP is based on all computers deploying and/or hosting websites, while the comparison with Flash Player is measured against all computers connected to the Internet.  The AJAX results are taken from a study conducted by eWeek.com’s Evans Data².

PHP has an estimated worldwide use of 37% as of early 2006, roughly one year ago³.

AJAX, after well over 2 years of popularity, is being used by as much as 25% of developers (of those surveyed in Brazil) to as little as 18% of developers (of those surveyed in North America)⁴ as of August 2006.

Flash Player 9 has already matched those numbers after only 6 months with an estimated worldwide adoption rate of 35%⁵ and across all version, a worldwide adoption rate of 96%.

 

¹http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/
²http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2009845,00.asp
³http://www.phparch.com/issuedata/articles/article_226.pdf
⁴http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2009845,00.asp
⁵http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html