Microsoft Releases Silverlight 2, Already Reaching One in Four Consumers Worldwide

Redmond, Wash. — Oct. 13, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. today
announced the availability of Silverlight 2, one of the industry’s most
comprehensive and powerful solutions for the creation and delivery of
applications and media experiences through a Web browser. Silverlight 2
delivers a wide range of new features and tools that enable designers
and developers to better collaborate while creating more accessible,
more discoverable and more secure user experiences.

Microsoft
also announced further support of open source communities by funding
advanced Silverlight development capabilities with the Eclipse
Foundation’s integrated development environment (IDE) and by providing
new controls to developers with the Silverlight Control Pack (SCP)
under the Microsoft Permissive License.

“We launched Silverlight
just over a year ago, and already one in four consumers worldwide has
access to a computer with Silverlight already installed,” said Scott
Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Division at
Microsoft. “Silverlight represents a radical improvement in the way
developers and designers build applications on the Web. This release
will further accelerate our efforts to make Silverlight, Visual Studio
and Microsoft Expression Studio the preeminent solutions for the
creation and delivery of media and rich Internet application
experiences.”

Silverlight adoption continues to grow rapidly,
with penetration in some countries approaching 50 percent and a growing
ecosystem that includes more than 150 partners and tens of thousands of
applications. During the 17 days of the 2008 Olympics Games in Beijing,
NBCOlympics.com, powered by Silverlight, had more than 50 million
unique visitors, resulting in 1.3 billion page views, 70 million video
streams and 600 million minutes of video watched, increasing the
average time on the site (from 3 minutes to 27 minutes) and Silverlight
market penetration in the U.S. by more than 30 percent. Broadcasters in
France (France Televisions SA), the Netherlands (NOS), Russia
(Sportbox.ru) and Italy (RAI) also chose Silverlight to deliver
Olympics coverage online. In addition, leading companies such as CBS
College Sports, Blockbuster Inc., Hard Rock Cafe International Inc.,
Yahoo! Japan, AOL LLC, Toyota Motor Corp., HSN Inc. and Tencent Inc.
are building their next-generation experiences using Silverlight.

“CBS
College Sports Network streams more than 20,000 hours of live content
annually for our 150-plus college and university official athletic
partners, so we demand that our video player environment be both
consumer friendly and robust,” said Tom Buffolano, general manager and
vice president, Digital Programming and Subscription, CBS
Interactive-Sports. “Silverlight was the perfect choice to help develop
and power our new, exclusive online collegiate sports experience, as it
features the best price and performance of any streaming media solution
on the market today. Silverlight also gives us the most flexibility in
expanding the product in the future as we develop embeddable players
and mobile platforms and explore new advertising integration
opportunities.”

Continued Commitment to Openness and Interoperability

Microsoft
announced plans to support additional tools for developing Silverlight
applications by providing funding to Soyatec, a France-based IT
solutions provider and Eclipse Foundation member, to lead a project to
integrate advanced Silverlight development capabilities into the
Eclipse IDE. Soyatec plans to release the project under the Eclipse
Public License Version 1.0 on SourceForge and submit it to the Eclipse
Foundation as an open Eclipse project.

Microsoft also will
release the Silverlight Control Pack and publish on MSDN the technical
specification for the Silverlight Extensible Application Markup
Language (XAML) vocabulary. The SCP, which will augment the powerful
built-in control set in Silverlight, will be released under the
Microsoft Permissive License, an Open Source Initiative-approved
license, and includes controls such as DockPanel, ViewBox, TreeView,
Accordion and AutoComplete. The Silverlight XAML vocabulary
specification, released under the Open Specification Promise (OSP),
will better enable third-party ISVs to create products that can read
and write XAML for Silverlight.

“The Silverlight Control Pack
under the Microsoft Permissive License really addresses the needs of
developers by enabling them to learn how advanced controls are authored
directly from the high-quality Microsoft implementation,” said Miguel
de Icaza, vice president, Engineering, Novell. “By using the OSP for
the Silverlight vocabulary, they further solidify their commitment to
interoperability. I am impressed with the progress Microsoft continues
to make, and we are extremely satisfied with the support for Moonlight
and the open source community.”

Beyond funding development in the
free Eclipse IDE, Microsoft currently delivers state-of-the-art tools
for Silverlight with Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Studio 2. In
addition, support is now extended to Visual Web Developer 2008 Express
Edition, which is a free download.

“We wanted to build a
cutting-edge, rich Internet application that enables our customers to
search our vast database of content and metadata so they can access
movie reviews, watch high-quality movie trailers, and either rent or
buy movies from our new MovieLink application,” said Keith Morrow,
chief information officer, Blockbuster. “Because Silverlight 2 now
includes several new rich controls such as data grids and advanced
skinning capabilities, as well as support for the .NET Framework,
allowing us to access our existing Web services, we were able to easily
maintain the high standards of the Blockbuster brand and bring the
application to market in record time.”

Delivering Features for Next-Generation Web Experiences

Highlights of new Silverlight 2 features include the following:

More information and details about Silverlight 2 are available by reading the Silverlight 2 fact sheet at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/silverlight/default.mspx.

Get Silverlight 2

Silverlight 2 will be available for download on Tuesday, Oct. 14, at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight. Customers already using a previous version of Silverlight will be automatically upgraded to Silverlight 2.