How to get Silverlight for Nokia Symbian S60 phones

Now that Silverlight beta is available for Nokia Symbian phones like the N97 and 5800 XpressMusic (S60 5th Edition) devices, you can download it from the Nokia Silverlight for Symbian page.  

While still in beta form, good to see this finally arrive as a downloadable runtime! 

Visit the Nokia S60 site for links to the developer tools for Silverlight on Symbian and to learn more about the S60 5th Edition platform.  There’s also Symbian info on the Silverlight site. 

Although this may be obvious to those outside the US, it’s easy to forget the market share Nokia and the Symbian platform have in smart phones.  According to Canalys, Symbian’s global marketshare for 2009 was about 47% – about 3X the iPhone market share.  Although rarely seen in America, it’s fair to say Symbian is the dominant smart phone platform in the world – and especially so outside the US. 

That said, the smart phone marketplace is changing dramatically and rapidly.  The addition of the Silverlight runtime for Symbian phones will significantly help drive the reach and ubiquity of Silverlight – and will also help enable developers to create the rich, compelling app experiences that will increase the value of Nokia’s Symbian phones to consumers. 

Here’s a pic (below) of a sample bing Silverlight app for Symbian devices.  

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