Nokia March 4 announced plans to make Silverlight available for the Nokia S60-based smart phones running the Symbian operating system, the world’s leading smart phone software. Nokia officials also said the company will make Silverlight available for Nokia Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets. The S60 platform is a complete Symbian OS-based smart phone terminal software product upon which developers can build applications. 

Tom Honeybone, a senior director in Microsoft's Developer Division who was involved in finalizing the deal with Nokia, said the agreement will substantially extend the reach of Silverlight by making the platform available for hundreds of millions of devices, including S60 on Symbian smart phones from a range of manufacturers.

Honeybone said Microsoft will demonstrate Silverlight on S60 during the opening keynote at the company’s MIX08 conference March 5 in Las Vegas.

"This is an important relationship on so many levels," S. "Soma" Somasegar, senior vice president of Microsoft's Developer Division, said in a statement. "Working with Nokia means we are easily able to reach a huge number of mobile users, including customers of all S60 licensees. This is a significant step in gaining broad acceptance for Silverli