Microsoft on Monday defended its Silverlight strategy, and stressed that the product is “very important and strategic” to the company.
The comments, from Bob Muglia, president of the server and tools division at Microsoft, came after an interview he did with ZDNet in which he said Microsoft’s Silverlight strategy has shifted.
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Silverlight will continue to be a cross-platform solution, “but HTML is the only true cross platform solution for everything, including (Apple’s) iOS platform,” Muglia told ZDNet.
In a response blog post, Muglia said that his interview was accurately reported, but he acknowledged that some of his comments “surprised people and caused controversy and confusion.”
“As this certainly wasn’t my intent, I want to apologize for that,” Muglia wrote. He stressed that Silverlight is still a top priority for Microsoft and that the company is working hard on the next release. “It will continue to be cross-browser and cross-platform, and run on Windows and Mac,” he wrote.
“Silverlight is a core application development platform for Windows, and it’s the development platform for Windows Phone,” he continued. “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.”
Muglia admitted that the Silverlight strategy and focus has indeed shifted, but said “this isn’t a negative statement, but rather, it’s a comment on how the industry has changed and how we’re adapting our Silverlight strategy to take advantage of that.”
Going forward, Microsoft will focus its Silverlight development around key trends, like enterprise app development, touch input and embedded devices, HD studio-quality content, and the expansion of Internet-connected devices, Muglia said.
Silverlight 4 made its debut in April. Last week, Microsoft released some updates for that version, which included improvements to WCF RIA Services, as well as the new Portable Library project, which will make it easier to share assemblies across SL Desktop, SL Phone, WPF and .NET on the server, Muglia said.