BBC iPlayer for iPhone

BBC iPlayer for iPhone. BBC has announced that they will be launching their iPlayer streaming TV service for the iPhone in the next few weeks. Lucky Brits will be able to watch their favorite BBC TV shows on their iPhones via the coincidentally-named iPlayer service.

BBC shows have been streamed or downloaded more than 17m times via its iPlayer broadband TV service since Christmas Day, according to figures from the corporation.

The iPlayer, which was improved and relaunched shortly before a major marketing campaign began on Christmas Day, also helped boost traffic to the BBC.co.uk website by 29% year on year in January.

Newly released BBC figures show the most popular shows available via the iPlayer, such as Torchwood, Ashes to Ashes and Doctor Who, are each attracting around 50,000 views a day.

Between Christmas Day and Tuesday last week, BBC TV shows have been streamed or downloaded more than 17m times via the iPlayer, the seven-day broadband TV catch-up service.

The iPlayer is now averaging around 1.3 million unique users a week, with as many as 500,000 streams or downloads per day.

Now, iPlayer streams its television shows in Flash format, and the iPhone does not support Flash. So, what format will the iPhone-compatible iPlayer use? Will BBC re-encode their iPhone-bound streams in H.264 (like YouTube does for the YouTube application)? Or, will the iPhone finally support Flash?

Well, there have been rumblings about the iPhone finally getting Flash support in tandem with the iPhone SDK rollout. Apple is expected to drop the official iPhone SDK on us soon, so the prospect of getting Flash support and a Flash-based iPlayer is exciting. It's all speculation at this point, but GearLive has it on good sources that Apple will be bringing Flash to the iPhone in the near future.