What Should I Choose? Adobe Flash Or Microsoft Silverlight?
Adobe, which is famous for its image and video editing softwares, is also the company that offers the Flash technology. Flash is utilized in millions of websites and it is the technology that enables videos to be viewed online.
According to New York Times, Adobe is going to make an announcement at the upcoming National Association of Broadcasters convention which would be held in Las Vegas, announcing that Flash would soon be extended to televisions.
Shantanu Narayen, the CEO of Adobe, said that TV sets and top boxes that support Flash would be available on the US market later this year (2009). With the introduction of Flash, users would be able to view the same videos on their TV screens, computers and phones.
“Coming generations of consumers clearly expect to get their content wherever they want on it, on any device, when they want it. This gets us where we want to go,” said Disney CTO Bud Albers on one occasion. Disney is fully supportive on this advancement of Flash technology.
Adobe generates huge profits by selling softwares for Flash. It is estimated that 98% of all computers are installed with Flash and 80% of the videos online are viewed with Flash. Thanks to these impressive figures, Adobe reported a revenue of $3.5 billion, with net income being $871.8 million.
Microsoft, who is determined to fight for its share in this particular market, launches Silverlight. Microsoft argued that Silverlight should be a better choice compared to Flash when it comes to HD 1080p video contents.
Microsoft commented that HD capability would become the mainstream format for videos in the future. Brad Becker from Microsoft (who is a former executive of Adobe) said he “can’t imagine what could be more important on a television than high video quality.”
Adobe Flash, having almost no direct competitor for years, finally faces some challenges as Microsoft joins the competition of bridging the gap between computers and televisions with the introduction of Silverlight.
If you enjoy reading this, you may like to get more about Silverlight 3 and flash 3d
