Microsoft Considering Silverlight For The Android Platform

by Chris Moor on Oct 15th 2008, 5:06am

Given Apple’s lack on enthusiasm for installing either Silverlight or Adobe Flash on its iPhones, Microsoft have started to take a closer interest in the open source Android platform.

“Basically where we’re at right now is we have talked with Apple,” Microsoft Vice President Scott Guthrie admitted. “We are very interested in being able to run [Silverlight] on the iPhone. At the end of the day, Apple ultimately controls what software runs on the iPhone. To date, what they’ve said is that at this time, they’re not looking to enable browser plug-ins like Silverlight or Flash to run on top of it.”

This is a stark contract to Android’s open source license which welcomes the development of third-party applications, which even gives developers the oppurtunity to contribute to the underlying OS itself.

“[The] Google phone is slightly different.” Guthrie said. “It’s more of an open platform, that is something we’re going to continue to look at. Certainly as it’s gotten deployed and if sales are good we’ll definitely keep our eyes out and look at that in the future.”

[via WebMonkey]

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Categorized as Android News

Scott

Sweet! This would be an excellent move by Microsoft. It’s the perfect way to sneak into Android’s back door style. If they do this I’ll have a new respect for Microsoft. It’s a win-win-win situation.
TareX

Guthrie uses the term “Google phone”?

Anyway he said he was interested in adding Silverlight to the iPhone. Then he said Google’s policy is the opposite of Apple’s. Not exactly a “coming soon” statement…
Ivan

uh oh, expect Adobe to follow with Flash shortly, they don’t want to be left out of the loop, especially to MS.
http://www.vinomatch.com Pierre

That would be a great decision from Microsoft and it would bring Visual Studio with C# as a development platform for Android. Google Should definitely encourage the development of silverlight on Android. They would suddenly gain the millions of .net developers for their phone apps. There would definitely be more apps developped for the Android thand there would be for the iphone.
http://watchdatenight.net Nella Lykke

Hey, I found this blog article while looking for help with fixing Microsoft Silverlight. I have recently switched browsers from Safari to Microsoft IE 6. Just recently I seem to have a issue with loading sites that use Microsoft Silverlight. Every time I browse website that requires Microsoft Silverlight, my computer doesn’t load and I get a “npctrl.dll” error. I cannot seem to find out how to fix the problem. Any aid getting Microsoft Silverlight to function is very appreciated! Thanks
Aaron

@Nella: That’s because you’re using an archaic browser (IE6). Try something more modern – like IE7 or IE8. Silverlight also runs on FireFox and Google Chrome (but not Opera).
Ivan

Silverlight is already on Android, this app for example is written in Silverlight: https://market.android.com/details?id=uk.co.aloneguid.todash&feature=search_result
http://Moshe.com.br Moshe

Until now there is no option to run silverlight at droid.

what everybody wants and need is a microsoft legal information about this support.

Android is a open plataform. There is no legal limitations, execept the comercial intersting.