Nokia bringing Microsoft's Silverlight to mobiles

It’s all go on the mobile web front this week. Nokia has announced it’s bringing Microsoft’s Silverlight technology – a web development technology for multimedia applications – to mobile. For developers, it means a program built using Silverlight can be put on any number of devices or platforms without the need for more coding.

Silverlight will be available for Nokia’s S60 phones, as well as Series 40 devices and Nokia internet tablets. Nokia said that support for Silverlight will extend opportunities for developers to create rich, interactive applications that run on multiple platforms in a consistent and reliable way.

The interesting thing about these sorts of announcements from technology companies is the time lag between a product coming out for desktops and its release on mobile devices – Microsoft released Silverlight in its PC form in the middle of last year. While it’s great to see the gap between the two platforms closing, tech firms should be realising that mobiles will soon be the most popular way of accessing the internet – and giving their mobile development the same kind of treatment as their PC development.