Adobe Flash Vs 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.

This extension is beneficial to the users as they can enjoy the same videos not only on their PCs or phones but also on TV screens. As Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen expected, televisions and set top boxes which support the Flash format may probably be launched into the US market at a later time in 2009.

Bud Albers, the CTO of Disney, showed his company’s support to Flash on the TV by saying “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.”

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.

Silverlight, which has greater support for HD 1080p video content as claimed by Microsoft, is a product of Microsoft used to substitute Flash.

“I can’t imagine what could be more important on a television than high video quality.” Microsoft’s Brad Becker, who is a former Adobe executive, stated the vitality of HD capability on TV.

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.