ESPOO, Finland, March 4 -- Nokiatoday announced plans to make Microsoft Silverlight available for S60 on
Symbian OS, the world's leading smartphone software(1), as well as for
Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets. Adding support for
Silverlight will extend opportunities for developers to create rich,
interactive applications that run on multiple platforms in a consistent and
reliable way.
"Today's consumers are very clear in what they want: easy access to
tightly integrated services and data on any device," said Lee Williams,
Senior Vice President in Nokia's Devices software organization. "Nokia's
software strategy is based on cross-platform development environments,
enabling the creation of rich applications across the Nokia device range.
Nokia aims to support market leading and content rich internet application
environments and to embrace and encourage open innovation. By working with
Microsoft, we are creating terrific opportunities and additional choices
for the development community, S60 licensees and the industry as a whole."
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.
"This is an important relationship on so many levels. Working with
Nokia means we are easily able to reach a huge number of mobile users,
including customers of all S60 licensees. This is a significant step in
gaining broad acceptance for Silverlight and ensuring it is platform
agnostic. This is critical since we want to make sure developers and
designers don't have to constantly recreate the wheel and build different
versions of applications and services for multiple operating systems,
browsers and platforms," said S. Somasegar, Senior Vice President of
Microsoft's Developer Division.
"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.
