Silverlight on Mobile Devices

Here are some information on Silverlight for mobile devices: Microsoft .NET Compact Framework product manager demonstrates early Silverlight prototype on Windows Mobile device.

My first question is: Will they port Silverlight to multiple mobile platforms or just Windows Mobile?

One major difference between the mobile and desktop world: Microsoft doesn’t own most of the mobile OS/platform market. If Silverlight only supports Windows Mobile, it’d be a tough sell for Flash Lite developers. Unless the deployment platform is not a factor and the development team relies on Microsoft products or languages, I see little reason to invest in a new development platform if the options for deployment are limited.

However, two potential advantages I see in Silverlight: It *may* have better device hardware integration – something the current standard Flash Lite Player lacks, and the use of .NET programming languages.

From a development standpoint (as devices get faster and more powerful), there should be little difference in development between Flash for the desktop and Flash for devices. They should both be using the same high performance virtual machine and ActionScript 3+, and support 2D/3D hardware acceleration (many devices have embedded 3D chipset already). Developers shouldn’t have to rely on third-party solutions or hacks accessing hardware and system resources – the standard player should provide these with a common API.

I’m sure Adobe is aware of these issues. Hopefully we’ll see better performance and support for device hardware integration in a near future version of the Flash Lite Player.