3 Reasons Why Flash Is Not Dying In CEE

Last year Adobe Flash death was widely announced. Everyone including me believes that we are witnesses of Flashocalypse. And of course it began but everyone can be suprised that death announcement was too early. Looking at the data it’s hard even say that we are witnesses of Flash agony.

As you can see from above chart (data from January 2016) Flash is not only not dying but looking great in terms of presence on devices of people from CEE. For example in Ukraine, more then 70% of views on domestic websites are made using Flash Player v20.x. That’s the best results from all CEE countries, but if you look at the other situation is similar. Suprised?

The reasons are more than obvious:

1. Firstly, most publishers still use Flash Player on their websites, which basically explains everything. In a situation where the user wants to view a video, but they don’t have the latest version of the program, they have to perform an update. It is main reason behind the results you can see on chart. The truth is that it will take at least few months when publishers switch to HTML5 players.

2. The second reason is related to online advertising – very often we still have to deal with ads made with Flash technology. The problem is that still there are not enough people who are able to prepare good quality ads in HTML5. So if you know HTML5 you can potentially earn tons of money. Also significant is the fact that certain online solutions, such as internet banking in some countries in CEE region, still use Flash technology. It also probably will take some time – especially in banking – to switch to different technology.

3. Last but not least – there are the security gaps and the patches issued by Adobe – often, these are critical errors in the software, so it’s no wonder users don’t want to take the risk. This reason paradoxically has a less influence on the numbers.

What is the future of Flash? The future of Flash is a foregone conclusion. The percentage of people using Flash will become increasingly smaller. However, much depends on how quickly publishers decide to move to HTML5.

I am convinced, however, that those who procrastinate over the change of technology will be forced to change by the users, or rather by their disappearance.

Data source: gemiusPrism