Nokia today announced plans to make Microsoft Silverlight available for S60 on Symbian OS, adding support for developers to create interactive applications that run on multiple platforms.

Microsoft released Silverlight 1.0 in September 2007 as a plug-in for browsers that could work on Windows, Linux and the Mac platform. Microsoft developed the technology to displace Adobe's Flash, which currently has about 97 percent to 99 percent penetration on the Web as a technology for delivering multimedia content and RIAs.

Flash also is available on wireless devices as Flash Lite; the technology is available on more than 450 million phones, according to Adobe.

The arrangement with Nokia will extend the reach of Silverlight by making the platform available for hundreds of millions of devices, including S60 on Symbian smartphones from a range of manufacturers, as well as Nokia Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets.

Silverlight is intended to be available to S60 developers later this year with initial service delivery anticipated shortly thereafter for all S60 licensees. This will allow S60 application developers to use a range of development environments for S60 on Symbian OS.

"Today's consumers are very clear in what they want: easy access to tightly integrated services and data on any device," said Lee Williams, Senior Vice President in Nokia's Devices software organization. "Nokia's software strategy is based on cross-platform development environments, enabling the creation of rich applications across the Nokia device range. Nokia aims to support market leading and content rich internet application environments and to embrace and encourage open innovation. By working with Microsoft, we are creating terrific opportunities and additional choices for the development community, S60 licensees and the industry as a whole."

Microsoft Silverlight availability for Nokia Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets will be confirmed later.