Adoption Rates of Silverlight

10/6/2007

A major advantage of Flash over Silverlight is its adoption rate. It is on nearly everyone's desktop. However I expect Silverlight will be adopted at an extremely quick pace, and here is why.

WMV Players

Silverlight video uses SMTPE VC-1, which in essence is also the latest WMV. Many sites already use Windows Media for streaming. Windows Media Player for me (and many others) has always been a pain in the rear, just as Quicktime and other players were. Flash Video was the first "no nonsense lightweight" video player. But now that Silverlight 1.0 (Focusing on video) is released, I expect those with Windows Media streaming and video support will quickly move over to Silverlight to give their audience a better experience, as well as open the door to high definition video.

Major Sites Already on Board

Major League Baseball, Fox Networks, and others are already signed on to Silverlight and producing content.

Moonlight

Mono has already announced Moonlight, Silverlight for Linux and other platforms. Microsoft is even assisting the Mono team and this provides for Silverlight on potentially even more platforms than Flash.

Its Microsoft

If Silverlight were from "Joe Schmoe Software" or even some smaller lesser known company, adoption would be slowed by customers reluctant to install anything new. However Silverlight is from the same company that produces the operating system on most people's computer. Most people will simply see "You need Microsoft Silverlight, click here" and do exactly that.

Windows Update

Many Silverlight enthusiasts have asked or speculated that Silverlight will be included in Windows update. Maybe it could even be part of an IE Update that is distributed through Windows Update. However with the issues between Adobe and Microsoft over PDF in office, it seems that Adobe is a bit trigger happy and in my opinion its very likely Adobe would start legal action against Microsoft.

IE 7.5 / 8

Another possibility is that IE 7.5 could be released and include Silverlight, or possibly when IE 8 is released. No word of any IE 8 on the horizon that I've heard of though at this time.

Silverlight 1.1

Silverlight 1.1 is what really gets most developers excited. Silverlight 1.0 is already released, and gets Silverlight started into the ecosystem. When 1.1 is released, users will simply see it as an upgrade and since they have Silverlight 1.0 already installed, will by even more likely to upgrade than they would to install Silverlight 1.1 from anew.

One Year On

I predict that 1 year from Silverlight 1.1's release, that most users will have both Silverlight and Flash installed. Furthermore I expect the differences in installed base to be negligible within one year of Silverlight 1.1's release.

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