Silverlight goes Mobile; Silverlight Downloads Released

As expected, there was a lot of news surrounding Silverlight at the Microsoft development conference MIX08 in Las Vegas in early March. 

One big announcement that Silverlight is going Mobile really excites us -- and hopefully many digital magazine readers -- as plans are underway to serve Silverlight based content on Windows Mobile 6 devices.  In addition, a recent announcement was made about extending Silverlight to Nokia devices!

The  press release indicated that with the help of Nokia, Microsoft has begun porting Silverlight to the S60s running the Symbian operating system – which according to information provided, Nokia’s S60 had more than 53 percent of worldwise market share for “converged device software” in the fourth quarter of last year. Microsoft and Nokia also will port Silverlight to Nokia Series 40 and Internet tablet devices.

Microsoft also announced the rate of user downloads of Silverlight, which we had been very anxious to hear.  Daily downloads of Silverlight are currently averaging 1.5 million, and that pace is expected to increase as Silverlight 2.0 nears general release.

With the 2008 Summer Olympics around the corner, and NBC’s plans to offer all web-based Olympic video coverage in Silverlight, the penetration rates are expected to climb even faster.

We certainly believe that having rich content available on many wireless devices is the wave of the future.  Increasing portability and rapidly improving wireless devices promise an even greater interest from readers in digital magazines and other visually rich content.