Microsoft has announced the launch of its Silverlight platform designed to work with Symbian S60 devices at the ongoing MIX10 conference at Las Vegas.
This is the first time that Microsoft has bought the Silverlight platform to a non-Microsoft mobile platform. Silverlight is a cross platform implementation of Microsoft's .NET Framework for creating interactive applications for the web on desktop computers and of late, mobile phones.
The current Silverlight beta for Symbian comes in two forms - one as an installer for Symbian ^1 (S60 5th edition) devices and the second one in the form of a developer tools suite for developing Silverlight applications for Symbian devices.
Microsoft seems to be aware of the fact that Symbian is, by far, the biggest Smartphone platform out there and for the same reason, will help extend the reach of Silverlight. While we are yet to see the first applications based on Silverlight for Symbian devices, there is an increased hope that we wouldn't have to wait much for the first ones to start trickling in.
If you happen to be a developer, you might want to check these links for further details:
Download Silverlight for Symbian - Beta Developer Tools
Download Silverlight for Symbian – Beta