Nokia has announced its intention to make Microsoft Silverlight available for S40 and S60 phones, along with Nokia Internet tablets.
The decision strengthens Silverlights position as a competitor to Flash, but more importantly (as I noted perhaps prematurely last week) readies Microsoft’s Silverlight platform for the one game that’s new enough that it might have a hope in winning: offline apps up against Adobe’s AIR platform. Rumor has it that we may well see an offline Silverlight announcement at Microsoft Mix this week.
Microsoft will be demonstrating Silverlight on a S60 at the first Mix keynote tomorrow. Presuming there’s internet access (there was this morning) tune in to TechCrunch at 9:30 PST Wednesday where I’ll be live blogging the first keynote featuring Ray Ozzie, Scott Guthrie, Dean Hachamovitch from the floor.
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I hope this silverlight s*it never succeeds, microsoft’s attitude towards the IT world is so annoying
I would be very interested to hear an announcement from microsoft this week about on offline silverlight
A close friend of mine at Adobe tells me they are also working on some sort of pic/vid support for the Nokia S60. I believe it will be working in conjunction with Silverlight.
One thing I’ve noticed about Silverlight-based webapps / “toys” / wtf-ever you call them is that they’re pretty performant in comparison to Flash. They’re very responsive, even when they dominate a good portion of page real estate.
I’m wondering if it’s because Silverlight developers are a little more careful, the Silverlight framework allows developers to be more performant with their code, or if the framework is just a little more well designed.
Thats great news, cant wait to see them demo this
@AW
Silverlight is much faster for a few reasons, first of all flash is interpreted line by line like php/javascript/perl while silverlight is compiled to x86 code, second of all silverlight is based on the a subset of the .net framework (you dont need to install it) which is pretty fast and solid.
“A close friend of mine at Adobe tells me they are also working on some sort of pic/vid support for the Nokia S60.”
Actually, these devices have been shipping with Adobe Flash Lite for awhile now:
http://www.adobe.com/mobile/su.....dsets.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/devices/nokia.html
jd/adobe
Its clear there is plenty of hate towards Silverlight, mostly because its from Microsoft. Its a good example of how toxic their brand is in some quarters.
Even without whatever surprises (or no-longer surprises) are in store regarding Silverlight this week, Silverlight 2 is where the battle really begins. If enough developers are attracted to it and make compelling things, it will get some traction. Developers currently happy with Flash, Flex, AJAX or whatever else, may have no reason to switch, but I guess in theory there are people with .net skills out there who may like to make web apps of one sort or another. Id certainly say we are in dire need of some richer user interfaces that have benefit to users, to justify using either Flash or Silverlight, as AJAX has most of the basic functionality & aesthetics covered these days?
Both Microsoft and Adobe have got a little better at giving some development tools away for free, but the cost of their best tools certainly doesnt help, I hope the battle between them causes some movement in this area.
And no matter what MIX brings, I guess Apple plan to trump Microsofts announcements with plenty of iphone SDK hype?
I, for one, like where Microsoft is going with this…
Silverlight 2 will work on the 3 most popular browsers (IE, Mozilla & Safari) and on 3 platforms (Windows, Linux & Safari) … and now Nokia is getting Silverlight support too which proves how serious MS is to gain market share. They could have chosen to exclude non-MS platforms but they didn’t…
And anway, purely from a technological viewpoint, silverlight is superior to flash in many ways. Adobe is going to have a hard time…
it would be brilliant experience on Nokia Tablets, to get Microsoft product fitting into current marshmallow of licenses… last time it was Opera browser engine which took enormous legal & technical efforts to push inside, but this time it is elephant of elephants to come into GPL glass shop
Nokia is making a huge strategic mistake.
Silverlight is just another part of Microsoft’s embrace, extend and extinguish strategy.
Once Microsoft has established Silverlight as a must-have application, non-Windows platforms will be turned into second-rate citizens.
Dumb Nokia .. a very dumb move.
I guess Adobe didn’t make a really good job spreading Flash for mobile devices. Get a life, Flash!
Besides, it is always amazing to see how the giant machine of Microsoft can proceed with full of suprises.
Imre
We need Silverlight on the iPhone/iPod Touch.
Without it, Flash will continue to dominate the mobile market.
Resubmitting this 11:26am comment, just in case it’s lost lost lost in the moderation queue:
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“A close friend of mine at Adobe tells me they are also working on some sort of pic/vid support for the Nokia S60.”
Actually, these devices have been shipping with Adobe Flash Lite for awhile now:
http://www.adobe.com/mobile/su.....dsets.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/devices/nokia.html
jd/adobe
I love Silverlight.
This is amazing news. I have no idea how this is going to be achieved technically BUT am loving the idea of silverlight mobile apps.
Well done MS!
This will be decided like everything else on the web. When you need Silverlight to watch porn on the web, it has won…and not before, no matter how many downloads Microsoft will claim.
Hello!
I think this try.
omg.. good work, dude