[Image Source: Silverlight for Symbian]

A page on the Silverlight website is saying that Nokia’s S60 5th Edition devices such as the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia N97, and N97 Mini are now Silverlight capable. The fact that S60 5th edition devices now support Silverlight through the mobile web browser is important because Zune’s web player and Bing’s Entertainment experience have been streaming music online using Silverlight for a total of just over nine months. Of the device’s new capabilities, the Silverlight website lists viewing Silverlight applications in the mobile browser and running Silverlight application on certain devices as features of this latest development. As a result, it is conceivable that one might be able to use Microsoft’s entertainment service preview tunes through Bing and satisfy their Zune Pass sweet tooth through Zune.net while on the go (even in Europe).

Running Silverlight applications locally on Nokia’s S60 devices means it might be possible for Windows Phone app developers to expand their sphere of influence onto devices and platforms previously considered too expensive or time consuming. One of the lures of developing for Windows Phone 7 is the flexibility of the two supported programming languages (XNA and Silverlight) to extend to screens and devices beyond just Windows Phone devices. In one example, four lines of code separate an Xbox Live Arcade Game from a Windows Phone 7 game. It is possible the same could be done in four lines or less for Silverlight-based applications on Nokia’s S60 platform.

While Nokia believes Symbian is the platform of choice for its smartphones, I wonder if future Silverlight releases will support newer devices running more recent versions of the Symbian OS. The S60 5th edition platform is partly based on v1 Symbian OS technology. The Symbian OS is up to v3. Finally, I wonder if Nokia’s new netbook/slate OS, known as MeeGo, also will be targeted in the future.

Thanks to ASP.NET MVP and Zune Nation member Rodrigo Diaz Concha for retweeting the message that led to this post.