15 March 2008

Microsoft To Launch Beta Version Of The
Silverlight For Symbian As Early As Next Week

According to ZDNet portal, Microsoft is finally ready to offer the first public beta of Silverlight for Symbian S60 devices.

Apparently, Microsoft posted the developer tools and the beta version of the Silverlight for Symbian code on March 11th but then quickly pulled them down again.

Adding support for Silverlight will extend opportunities for Symbian developers to create rich, interactive applications that run on multiple platforms in a consistent and reliable way. 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, including S60 on Symbian smartphones from a range of manufacturers, as well as Nokia Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets.

"There is clear market demand for rich, Web-based services across a variety of device types, but developing these can often be commercially difficult. For Microsoft this extends Silverlight to a broader range of vendors, platforms and devices. For Nokia it expands the web runtime options on its devices, enabling a wider community of developers and more applications. This should help the uptake of higher speed mobile services and advance a new era of anytime, anywhere device-based computing", said Bola Rotibi , Principal Analyst at Ovum.

Microsoft Silverlight availability for Nokia Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets will be confirmed later.