• BBC News , Tuesday, March 4, 2008 11:30 AM

Microsoft on Tuesday announced a new deal with Nokia to put its Silverlight technology in front of the Finnish handset maker's millions of mobile phone users. Silverlight allows developers to create multimedia applications independent of browser, operating system and handset. Because of its interoperability, the technology is seen as a direct competitor to Adobe's market-dominating Flash, which is already on millions of mobile phones.

Under the deal, Silverlight software will be made available on Nokia smartphones running on Symbian's operating system. Nokia's S6 software platform, which uses Symbian, will be the first to deploy the technology. Rival handset makers LG and Samsung also use S6, which has a market share of more than 53 percent in the software platform market. The N96 phone will be the first handest to run the software.

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