With the release of
Silverlight 3.0 not long ago, Microsoft has shown a bit more detail on the plans it has for the technology in the future. According to
CNET, Abu-Hadba (leader of Microsoft's developer and platform evangelism division) has said that half of all Internet-connected devices will be packing Silverlight by next year.
Microsoft plans to expand their product to many different devices, including Apple's iPhone, and to do so they want to make sure that they don't have to create 'lite' versions of it. Scott Guthrie, Abu-Hadba's fellow developer unit executive, said, "We want to make sure people have a 'wow' experience," though they admit it's taken them longer than they'd have liked so far. As we speak, Microsoft is in beta testing stages of Silverlight for Android and Windows Mobile, and CNET expects announcements to be made at the Professional Developer Conference this fall, with Guthrie saying, "You are going to hear a lot more details about it later this year."
Interestingly, Abu-Hadba doesn't wonder if Silverlight will be with us in 10 years time... more, he brings up the uncertainty that Microsoft's rival will be, Adobe (due to their Flash software). He notes that Adobe is now a company that maintains a web platform for general purpose, rather than aiming at just being a design company, something that they can't keep up forever. "I don't think they will exist in 10 years in the form they are today," he said, but to quote CNET, "[imagine how] unthinkable it would have been to predict in 2000 that Sun Microsystems would go away."
Regardless, we'll see how far Silverlight has progressed by the year's end.
