A RIA statistics page is publishing the numbers of browsers having RIA plug-ins installed on a daily basis. The RIA space today is occupied by Flash but Silverlight is catching up.
The statistics were collected by monitoring 41 web sites over a period of 30 days counting a total of almost 1.5 million unique browsers. Considering all browsers and operating systems, Flash is present on 97% of the systems, while Silverlight is on 21% and Java plug-in on 75%. (All the numbers were rounded.)
| OS | Flash (%) | Silverlight (%) | Java (%) |
| Linux | 83 | 2 | 28 |
| Mac OS X | 95 | 18 | 96 |
| Windows 2000 | 97 | 4 | 60 |
| Windows 2003 | 51 | 10 | 39 |
| Windows XP | 99 | 20 | 74 |
| Windows Vista | 99 | 30 | 86 |
| Windows 7 | 100 | 83 | 0 |
| Total | 97 | 21 | 75 |
What’s interesting is that Silverlight is more present in Firefox than Internet Explorer, when it comes to browsers across all operating systems:
| Browser | Flash (%) | Silverlight (%) | Java (%) |
| Firefox | 97 | 27 | 88 |
| IE | 97 | 21 | 73 |
| Safari | 100 | 19 | 93 |
Across all browsers and OSes, the major RIA platforms scored:
| RIA Technology | Presence (%) |
| Flash 9 | 42 |
| Flash 10 | 53 |
| Silverlight 1 | 2 |
| Silverlight 2 | 19 |
For the last 3 months, the trends are:
| RIA Technology | 3 months ago (%) | Today (%) |
| Flash 9 | 58 | 40 |
| Flash 10 | 37 | 54 |
| Silverlight 1 | 3 | 3 |
| Silverlight 2 | 12 | 19 |
Flash 9 and 10 have switched places, together having a strong presence across browsers. Flash is the RIA platform of choice. Silverlight 1 is about at the same level at around 3%, while Silverlight 2 grew almost 8%. But Microsoft is most likely going to include Silverlight in Windows 7, and its presence will certainly rocket.