Windows Phone apps built on Silverlight

Another kicking for Flash

Microsoft will announce next month that the development platform for Windows Phone 7 Series, the successor to Windows Mobile, will be Silverlight.

Developers close to the project have apparently told CRN that the move, which will become official at next month's Mix10 event in Las Vegas, will "open [Silverlight] up to a huge amount of developers and create a large ecosystem for building and acquiring applications," adding, "We have been waiting for this for a long time."

A Microsoft spokesman said: "While we are not sharing details about the Windows Phone 7 Series development platform or marketplace publicly at Mobile World Congress, you can expect much more information about the developer tools and opportunity to come at MIX in March."

Silverlight has failed to make much of an impact since its launch, with most developers following the well-worn Flash path. But Adobe's AIR development platform and Flash software - which are rapidly gathering a reputation for being overblown, insecure and buggy - are starting to fall out of favour.

With Apple publicly berating Flash and now Microsoft kicking it while it's down, we can't help but wonder whether the party is over for Adobe's once ubiquitous platform.