News

Nokia sees the Silverlight

Posted by Robert Bazinet on Mar 07, 2008 09:35 AM

Community: .NET
Topics: Mobile ,; Web Frameworks ,; Silverlight
Tags: Telco ,; .NET Micro Framework

Nokia announced it will make Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 available for its S60 phones running Symbian OS as well as Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets. Silverlight will give developers opportunities to create rich and interactive applications running on multiple platforms.

Silverlight is Microsoft's answer to Adobe Flash for integrated-rich-media Web 2.0 people are used to. Silverlight is:

Silverlight 2 includes a cross-platform, cross-browser version of the .NET Framework, and enables a rich .NET development platform that runs in the browser. Developers can write Silverlight applications using any .NET language (including VB, C#, JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby).

The announcement includes a demonstration to developers at this week's MIX08 conference in Las Vegas:

Microsoft will demonstrate Silverlight on S60 during the opening keynote at Microsoft's MIX08 conference on March 5 in Las Vegas. Silverlight is intended to be available to S60 developers later this year with initial service delivery anticipated shortly thereafter for all S60 licensees. This will allow S60 application developers to use an even wider range of development environments for S60 on Symbian OS than today. Today S60 developers can use: C++ (using native Symbian OS APIs and Open C providing subset of standard POSIX libraries), S60 Web Run-time (supporting standards-based web technologies such as Ajax, JavaScript, CSS and HTML), the Java(TM) language, Flash Lite from Adobe, and Python.

Nokia's reasons for wanting Silverlight are very clear and are explained in Nokia's press release:

Today's consumers are very clear in what they want: easy access to tightly integrated services and data on any device," said Lee Williams, Senior Vice President in Nokia's Devices software organization. "Nokia's software strategy is based on cross-platform development environments, enabling the creation of rich applications across the Nokia device range. Nokia aims to support market leading and content rich Internet application environments and to embrace and encourage open innovation. By working with Microsoft, we are creating terrific opportunities and additional choices for the development community, S60 licensees and the industry as a whole."

Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering next-generation media experiences and rich interactive applications. Silverlight is already powering thousands of applications around the world and organizations including Entertainment Tonight, the NBA and NBC Universal to deliver superior Web-based experiences to their customers. The arrangement with Nokia will substantially extend the reach of Silverlight by making the platform available for hundreds of millions of devices.

Microsoft is determined to give developers a strong platform on mobile devices beyond the Nokia Symbian OS:

Microsoft eventually plans to include a runtime for Silverlight in its Windows Mobile platform. Although Nokia is not yet one of Microsoft's Windows Mobile handset partners, it's rumored it will come on board (alongside competitors such as Sony Ericsson and HTC). Meanwhile, Microsoft chose it as the company to bring Silverlight to handsets because of its leading market position.

The demonstration of Nokia an Silverlight can be found at the MIX web site and more information about this Nokia announcement can be found at the Nokia web site.