Recently, I came across dabbledb, while investigating (simple) online tools to visualize data …

“Dabble DB helps you create online databases on the web. It’s easy to use yet extremely flexible and powerful.”

Anyways, I was looking for some data to put into it to test it out and get more aquatinted with what dabble had to offer, feature wise … and it got me thinking back to earlier this year …

Low and behold, I remembered around January 2008, Strategic Analytics put out some research data contained in paper: Flash-Enabled Handset Forecast: 91% Global Growth in 2007 as Flash Lite Gains Momentum outside Japan, that had some data in regards to Flash Lite penetration in 2007 and 2008.

From that research, Bill composed and posted a pdf containing the forecasted install base of Flash Lite for 2007 and 2008 based on that report.

The dataset was small enough to test dabbledb.

So, I took that data and imported into dabbledb, and now came up with some very basic visuals of the data … pie charts, bar, worldmap, etc.

Flash Lite Devices for 2008 Worldwide in Map Format

Flash Lite Devices for 2008 Worldwide in Pie Chart Format

Flash Lite Devices for 2008 Worldwide in Bar Chart Format

With dabbledb you can also create “views” just as you would with any other (worthwhile) database tool. Pretty cool … I just with the whole dabble UI was a Flex or AIR app (someone get on that!).

For anyone looking for an simple online database engine, I’d definitely look at dabbledb, it offers the ability to:

 • Create reports
 • Sorting and grouping
 • Collaborate with others
 • Powerful filtering
 • Formulas and subtotals
 • Pivot tables
 • Calendars · Charts · Maps
 • Design forms
 • Share and collect data

It’s not free, but perhaps one could make a use case to pay for the service for the right client/project …

–

P.S.

I don’t have immediate plans on making the Flash Lite data public from dabble, since:

1.) We all know there are about 1/2 billion Flash devices (500,000,000)
2.) The data is easy enough to interpret without visuals!
3.) I don’t have the complete research paper to fill the “Other” areas represented.
4.) dabbledb is not free, trial only lasts 30 days!
5.) The data is very out of date (it’s from before January 2008)

… however, if new data should become available in the future at any time, it’ll be easy to update this online database and push it out.

If/when new 2009 stats become available sometime in the future, I’ll revisit this little mini community project and possibly map the data into a 3-D worldmap (via exported KML from dabbledb).

If you are interested in the old Flash-Enabled Handset Forecast data, it is here in spreadsheet format.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 3rd, 2008 at 1:00 am and is filed under Flash Lite, Flash Lite 1.1, Flash Lite 2.0, Flash Lite 3.0, Flash Lite 3.1, Flash Mobile, Flash Mobile Developer, Handsets, Mobile, Mobile Business, Mobile Developer, Mobile OEM, www.flashdevices.net. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.