Over the weekend we reported on a story based on an interview by Mary Jo Foley with Microsoft president Bob Mugulia. In this interview Mugulia made it sound like Microsoft would be backing off deploying Silverlight in the browser and focus it more on a mobile technology for building applications in Windows Phone 7.
Now it seems Mugulia is declaring the Silverlight is indeed still alive on the desktop and in a blog post is seeking to clarify Microsoft’s position:
During the conference, I gave an interview where, among other things, I talked about the great work we’re doing with Silverlight – in particular, support for Windows Phone 7, which we featured heavily at the conference. The interview was accurately reported. I understand that what I said surprised people and caused controversy and confusion. As this certainly wasn’t my intent, I want to apologize for that. I’d like to use this post to expand on what I said, and talk about the very important role Silverlight has going forward.
In the interview, I said several things that I want to emphasize:
- Silverlight is very important and strategic to Microsoft.
- We’re working hard on the next release of Silverlight, and it will continue to be cross-browser and cross-platform, and run on Windows and Mac.
- Silverlight is a core application development platform for Windows, and it’s the development platform for Windows Phone.
We haven’t yet publically announced a launch date for the next release of Silverlight, but we’ll talk more about it in the coming months.
via WinRumors