Microsoft announced today that the final release of Silverlight 2 will be made available Tuesday Oct 14. The company gloats about 25% penetration, but take a look at Microsoft’s promoted partners and try to find one that Microsoft didn’t pay to try it out. It’s worth asking the question - is this too little too late?

In a Customer Evidence and Quote sheet put together by Microsoft PR, they lead with NBC’s universally underwhelming Silverlight powered olympics player - not bad, but what’s next? MLB, Microsoft’s largest initial partner which praised its rich capabilities is notably missing from the testimonials list, having trimmed back Silverlight use on much of their site after initially jumping in.

The other partners listed (CBS Collegs Sports, Blockbuster, France Television, Hard Rock Cafe International) seem more satisfied with Silverlight as an acceptible next step based on their pre-existing Windows Media workflow rather than a next generation platform capable of greater interaction and richer user experience.

Until developers create something really different using Silverlight and make it work better than Flash, there’s not much advantage to Silverlight. Hoping to make Silverlight more developer friendly, Microsoft announced plans to create an open source development environment, funding Soyatech to create an Eclipse plugin that will provide greater interoperability between Silverlight and Java, but that’s not slated for release until Spring 2009.

Hopefully by then Microsoft can find some partners willing to build rich applications with Silverlight, without Microsoft fronting cash to build them. Otherwise, they might as well just forget this whole thing.

News that Adobe is close to completing development on a Flash App for the iPhone has generated plenty of discussion, but there seems to be a growing consensus that there isn’t sufficient incentive for Apple to publish it.

The iPhone’s closed platform gives Apple tremendous power which would only be weakened by offering developers another platform to create rich applications on. In terms of video it is less than critical; users already watch H.264 encoded YouTube clips via a separate app and can watch Quicktime encoded DailyMotion videos through the Safari browser. The range of video that can be watched without the Flash player will continue to increase as more video sites support industry standard codecs.

Access to the iPhone would be great for Adobe, the more platforms Flash can be used on the better, but Flash apps are typically processor heavy, they wouldn’t necessarily provide revenue for Apple and the iPhone already has a large, loyal user base. Until Flash can add substantial value, and right now it can’t there are few advantages in supporting it for Apple.