Within five hours of going live, the Skyfire mobile browser for iPhone yesterday became the top grossing app, the third highest paid app overall and the top application in the Utilities category at the iTunes App Store. Then it got pulled by none other than Skyfire itself.
So what was so special? Skyfire allowed iPhone users to view Flash content on their phones, something Steve Jobs has been publically against for some time now. Skyfire transcodes Flash-based content on its cloud and then serves it up within the browser, but due to unexpected demand, it wasn't able to keep up with the traffic.
Just hours after going live with it new browser, Skyfire pulled the app due to performance issues, saying it was "sold out."
"User experience was performing well for the first few hours, but as the surge continued, the peak load on our servers and bandwidth caused the video experience to degrade," explained a post on the company's blog.
The company did not say when the app, which sold for $2.99 at the App Store, would go live again but promised it was working to bring capacity in line with demand.