31 replies to this topic 2 votes

[guru]

hey, what do you mean no reason at all. vrml bought 3d to the web ... j/k +1 to your post.

[hdood]

Joshie, on 05 September 2010 - 19:55, said:

Well it can't just be a matter of marketshare. While you may think that's the most important, it's definitely not the driving force behind business decisions. Silverlight already has a larger marketshare than iOS does for smartphones, but iOS attracts thousands of developers and is quite a lucrative ecosystem. It was attracting developers even when it had less. The large library of applications then attracted more users, which attracted more developers, back and forth, building on each other.

What does the Silverlight browser plugin (which, ironically, is not available on WP7) have to do with Apple's mobile OS though? I think we're talking about different things. I'm talking about what is the best choice for a business that provides content to users. You normally want your company's web presence to be accessible to as many people as possible. That means that the solution that is accessible to 93% of people with no additional requirements will normally be preferable to the one that only reaches 60%. If possible, you want to go with it.

Joshie, on 05 September 2010 - 19:55, said:

What's more important is ease of acquiring the software. As long as Silverlight is extremely easy for anyone to install, people will install it to get to the content they want.

To some extent. It depends on just how interested they are in the content. If you rely on this, you are going to have people that say no thanks (and the bar for this can be pretty low), and you are going to have people that can't install Silverlight even if they want to because they don't control the computer they're using. Flash is still going to win.