Silverlight Vs. Flash Penetration
Flash and Silverlight are very similar programs that are used to view a wide variety of content on the Web. They are also in direct competition with each other. Flash is owned and developed by Adobe Systems, while Microsoft is the creative force behind the Silverlight platform. Both companies want their platform to be the go-to application for viewing Web content, but as of May 2010 the penetration numbers show that one remains clearly in the lead.
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Adobe Flash
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Flash is a multimedia platform that can embed video, audio, animation and other interactive elements to Web pages. It was originally developed by Macromedia in 1996, but is currently owned, distributed and developed by Adobe Systems. It is compatible with nearly all operating systems in existence, including all versions of Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and various mobile operating systems. As of May 2010 the most current version of Adobe Flash is Version 10.
Microsoft Silverlight
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Silverlight is a multimedia platform very similar to Flash that can also display video, audio and interactive animation embedded onto a Web page. It is developed by Microsoft and is compatible with Windows and Mac OS X systems. A variant of the program called Moonlight has also been developed that adds compatibility to Linux systems. The first version of Silverlight was released in 1997. The most current version as of May 2010 is Version 4, which was released on April 15, 2010.
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Flash Penetration
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Adobe Flash has near universal penetration across the world. External studies vary, but the lowest estimates, found by Stat Owl from a date range of November 2009 to April 2010, place Adobe Flash penetration at a near-ubiquitous 96.31 percent. NPD, one of the largest market research groups in the United States, conducted their own poll and found that over 99 percent of the 2,000 individuals polled had a version of Adobe Flash Player installed on their system.
Silverlight Penetration
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Microsoft Silverlight penetration is far less than Flash. Rich Internet Application Statistics, a company that gathers information on browsing habits and updates on a daily basis, shows that Silverlight penetration is around 60 percent as of May 2010. These numbers also show that most who have Silverlight installed on their system have not yet upgraded to the latest version. As of May 2010, only approximately 2 percent of all Web users have managed to upgrade to Silverlight 4.
Future
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While Silverlight's penetration numbers are far inferior when compared to Flash, they are sharply on the rise. According to Stat Owl, Silverlight penetration more than doubled from September 2008 to April 2010, going from just under 20 percent to nearly 50 percent. Flash's biggest competition may be HTML5, the emerging new standard of HTML (the programming language that is used to display Web content) that can display video, interactive graphics and animation without the need for any external application, be it Flash or Silverlight, to be downloaded.
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