posted:
Monday, June 15, 2009
UPDATE Feb03, 2010: as time goes by... Silverlight popularity grows! riastats.com has published that
more than 50% of all browsers have Silverlight installed (note: we retrieved the data Feb 03, 2010).
And, for sure, it's just a matter of time until all Windows machines have installed Silverlight.
Planning a client's website also means to know what the audience base for a certain technology is.
Adobe Flash made its appearance approx. 10+ years ago and is currently installed on approx. 97% of all user machines (a.k.a. browsers).
This means it is safe to develop Flash components for a website because 3% are irrelevant.
Silverlight currently (May '09) reaches 27% of all browser users. This is only a third, however, with an upward tendency. Once major websites like TV sites etc.
utilize the technology the Silverlight market share should increase rapidly. Silverlight 2 was released approx. October 2008 and Silverlight 3 is already on its way.
As it matures it will get the developer's attention, that's for sure.
If we integrate a Silverlight component for a website it is currently more likely (approx. 70% !) that a user gets the 'Install Silverlight' prompt but that's how
Flash started out as well and if nobody steps forward and takes the route (=integrating Silverlight components in web sites) then we would not see major market share improvements.
Adobe's Flex (Framework) is based upon Flash technology and therefore uses the widely installed Flash Player.
Flex and Silverlight both aim at developing RIA's (rich interface apps) which are cross-browser compatible.
Our view of the competition is following: both technologies are great but Silverlight with its powerful backend dotnet language integration
has major advantages.
Adobe Flash struggled many years with moving from one Actionscript language implementation to the next version and its current version is not as powerful as dotnet.
However, currently both platforms are comparable and similar but we (as a creative-tech agency) will focus on Silverlight and observe its market share.
On a case-by-case basis we will decide for and implement the technology which is more appropriate for the specific purpose
but we are leaning towards Silverlight when suitable.
To check the market shares of those technologies you can go to several sites on the web, e.g.:
http://www.statowl.com/silverlight.php
http://riastats.com/