While Microsoft Silverlight has signed on some pretty decent customers in MLB, WWE and Entertainment Tonight there’s not much momentum driving it toward mainstream adoption.

In an admittedly completely unscientific poll done by TelerikWatch.com 82% of responders said they were “waiting for Silverlight 1.1 before doing any serious development.”

This is after all a Microsoft product, and if they can’t get their latest operating system to work (see: Vista issues) companies are not going to rush into investing time and money on an unproven platform.

Don’t get me wrong, Silverlight has had some good early buzz. Until Adobe lowers their Flash licensing fees Silverlight will be cheaper, and for a company already using Windows Media the switch to Silverlight will be a lot less complicated than another next gen format.

The question is whether it will be adopted once it’s ready to go in a more stable form. Existing Microsoft partnerships will drive development by big companies and it will be especially strong for live streaming, but it’s no “flash killer.”

Both products can do most of the same things, ease of development and business considerations including cost of switching will determine which is used. Silverlight enables Microsoft to stay competitive, but I think it’s unlikely we see many companies currently using Flash switch to Silverlight or vice versa.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 5:33 pm and is filed under technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.