Why the lack of innovation and Silverlight on Windows CE?

Question

A manager asked me to do some quick research on the possibility of doing Silverlight development on Windows CE devices.

After 15 minutes I was surprised that:

• Silverlight for Windows CE seems to be nowhere in sight, with some sites wanting to report it so bad they they are quoting twitter tweets as their source of news, the word "mobile" is even missing on Silverlight 3 Feature Lists but you find it in the comments with people saying things like I was hoping to hear an update on getting Silverlight onto Windows Mobile and Nokia devices.

• Windows CE 6.5, which is not even out yet, is getting scathing reviews such as this article which basically says: nothing new, interface improvements behind the curve, UI tweaks (honeycomb) skin deep, no capacitive touch screens, not due till Q4 2009, not backwards compatible, no zune, no new windows media player, no decent screen keyboard, browser pales against competition and, number 10: by showing little innovation on their latest mobile OS, Microsoft is showing zero leadership in the mobile space. It seems that Microsoft is weakly limping along in the shadow of the iPhone. The apparent lack of Silverlight on Windows CE 6.5 didn't even make the list of woes.

I thought things were different. So I sadly have to report that Silverlight on mobile devices may have to wait a year or more.

Does anyone have any more positive, substantial news that I can report about Silverlight on mobile devices?

Answer 1

I also very recently researched the use of Silverlight on Windows CE. The result is that while it seems to be almost there, with videos showcasing it from MIX08, it may be released some time this year, but likely not in the first half. They said "some time 2009", and for some months now, it was in "private testing".

Because of that, while I'd love to use Silverlight, I decided to go with OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenVG, which is fully hardware-accelerated on our current target device. Plenty of power and not that hard to use, even from .NET Compact Framework.

Oh, and the iPhone is all that cool for a phone (or a music player), but Windows CE is available for many more devices, including non-personal-gadget / non-mobile products. That's an area where Apple does not shine because they don't license their platform.

Answer 2

I've heard rumors that the UI for WindowsMobile 7.0 will be Silverlight/WPF based. It doesn't sound like Microsoft is putting any effort into any version before that, because as soon as WM7 is out, they'll want to kill anything off that came before.