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Technology: Page (1) of 1 - 01/20/09

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Microsoft's SilverLight tightens the screws on Adobe's Flash?

By Matthew David

The Microsoft SilverLight team knows they have an uphill battle against Adobe's Flash, but it is not stopping them from innovating and increasing the compelling reason for why they are a viable alternative Rich Internet Application platform.

The development tools
Key to Microsoft's growth and adoption of SilverLight is its development tool. A weakness of Adobe's Flash is its inability to easily create complex solutions, test the solutions and manage the code used in the development process. SilverLight does not need to worry about this as Microsoft knows a thing or two about solution development. The release of Visual Studio 2008 came with the ability to easily create SilverLight applications.

Through being able to use Visual Studio, a designer or developer can take advantage of tools such as Team System for code management and version control, mature debugging tools and a development interface already familiar to millions of Microsoft coders. The ace in the hole is that SilverLight 2.0 enables a developer to code with JavaScript, C#, and VB.NET, all of which are mature, well known technologies. In contrast, a Flash developer has to choose whether they are going to learn how to code in Flash or Flex with ActionScript. The unfamiliar toolset is often an immediate barrier for would-be Flash developers.

Beyond the PC
There is certainly room in the Rich Internet Application space for both Flash and SilverLight. The Web browser technology space is proving that you can have many big names and still make money for everyone (Google's Chrome, Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Apple's Safari and Mozilla's FireFox demonstrate this fact with an ever increasing number of Web browsers). If money is not a deciding factor - and I hope it is not - then the winners may well be decided by those companies that can deploy their solutions to different technologies to the new SmartPhone community. Apple has already clearly shown that a good technology, such as Mobile Safari, is adopted quickly. Mobile Safari on the iPhone and iPod Touch was able to not only become the most popular mobile Web browser, its user share in the US is the same as Microsoft's Windows Mobile Internet Explorer, RIM's Web browser, Symbian's and Palm's mobile browser share combined. Apple did this all in less than one year proving that new technology can reach critical mass very quickly.
Adobe has been working aggressively for several years to install their Flash Player on non-PC devices. Today, the Flash Player works on many cell phones, the PlayStation and even on the Wii. Notably absent is Apple's iPhone. It is this absence that may cause Adobe to lose control of rich media solutions and give Microsoft the edge it needs if it can get SilverLight on the iPhone.

SilverLight has currently experience limited exposure on the Mobile front. At face value this appears as if Adobe has the new Mobile market sealed up. The reality is more interesting. SilverLight as a technology has been developed for deployment to many different platforms. In contrast, Adobe is spending millions retrofitting Flash to work on the ultra-conservative CPU's found in even the most powerful mobile phones. Expect 2009 to be the year that SilverLight comes to popular Mobile operating systems such as Windows Mobile, the iPhone (yes, I really believe this will happen), Google's Android, Nokia's Symbian and RIM's BlackBerry.

It all comes down to money
Love 'em or hate 'em, there is no denying that Microsoft is a massively successful company. The juggernaut company even looks good in the middle of the worst recession since 1931, posting profits and retaining a healthy level on their stock value. This is a problem for Adobe who has seen its fortunes closely follow the fall of the US markets. Microsoft is a solid, stable and reliable company. What does this mean for new technologies such as SilverLight? It means this: Microsoft is large enough to weather several bad storms (even PR failures such as Windows Vista that cost the company billions in dollars for R&D and advertising) whereas Adobe cannot take the same kind of risks.

The length of the current global financial crisis may well determine which technology wins. A protracted recession over several years may well erode too deeply into Adobe's product development budget forcing Flash to be enhanced over longer product development lifecycles whereas SilverLight can continue along its rapid development as it will be funded from the success of other Microsoft products such as Office, Windows and the Server product line.