I’ve read several articles about the benefits of Silverlight over Flash and I’ve actually done some development in both. Silverlight is the clear winner in terms of power, but as one of my colleagues pointed out the other day does it matter? His point was that Flash has an incredible penetration rate. According to Adobe it’s in the 99% range. When considering rolling out a new product that requires a plug-in why introduce another barrier to adoption? Microsoft’s was reporting back in October 2008 that Silverlight’s penetration was ‘1 in 4’. Meaning 25%. That’s a heck of a lot for just becoming available. My immediate reaction to my colleague’s response was that it actually wasn’t that important. If you provide a ‘cool’ product people will install the plug-in. Have you seen how many toolbars people have installed on their browsers lately?
I also believe that Microsoft has a responsibility to its developer community to promote the plug-in as quickly as possible. What type of responsibility do I think is appropriate? Make it part of the Microsoft Update. That’s right. That’s 89.6% of the worlds computers. An instant gain in market share. Of course not everyone is using IE mind you, but it’s still significant.
Another thing Microsoft could do to boost penetration is buy Yahoo. That’s right. By purchasing Yahoo that would mean that Microsoft would own 3 out of the 5 largest web properties on the web. #1 Yahoo at about 29%, #4 Live at 20% and #5 MSN at 15%. That’s 65% of world wide web traffic according to Alexa. That’s a lot of Silverlight installations.
Would this keep you from creating an application in Silverlight?