Silverlight Penetration

I’ve posted a few entries on my findings around Silverlight penetration (see Resources, below, for more) but recently received a request for an update from someone called Harder. I’ve actually been meaning to post current stats for some time so thanks for the kick in the pants! I’ll aim to post updates every quarter going forward.

The figures represented are drawn from the Omniture SiteCatalyst web site analytics package, which tells me the number of visitors to our sites with a given plug-in vs the internet average over a given date range. Unfortunately the internet average is always shown as a constant with no further qualification (changing the date range doesn’t change the value and it’s unclear how the average is calculated) and Omniture does not indicate plug-in version. In the first case, I’m reporting the internet average from the point in time where I’ve recorded it—so I don’t have continuous data; in the second case, assume a mix of version 1 and 2. The same goes for Flash.

From the graphs below we can see one very interesting bit of information: Silverlight has been installed by 28.4% of internet users as of today (compare with 17.6 in September 2008). The number of users visiting our sites with Silverlight installed is considerably lower than the internet average, which is interesting because while our sites are graphically intensive and somewhat interactive we do target a wide audience with differing levels of technical ability.

Resources

• Silverlight Penetration (October 2008)
• Silverlight vs Flash Penetration (February 2009)
• Driving Silverlight Update – Playboy Archive (March 2009)

Driving Silverlight Uptake – Playboy Archive

There’s nothing link pornography to drive technology and with the Playboy archive now freely available online there’s really no reason not to install Silverlight.

Deep Zoom takes on a whole new meaning in this context. Really though, it’ll be interesting to review Silverlight adoption rates when the masses stumble across this stuff.

If you’re reading this at work and don’t feel comfortable viewing porn (in the name of research) on company time but still want to experience Deep Zoom, check out the Hard Rock Cafe’s memorabilia site instead.

Silverlight vs Flash Penetration

Following on from the previous Silverlight penetration stats I posted last year, the latest (Q4 2008) figures are now in! 

15% of our visitors across all of the Tourism eMarketplace sites have some version of the Silverlight plugin installed (Omniture doesn't say which version). The internet average has increased since October and is now sitting at 21.5%--a reasonable gain. 

The ultimate contest is with Flash, however, and our stats are still telling us all site visitors have a version of the Flash player installed.

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Silverlight Penetration

Silverlight 2 RTM'd yesterday with a personal hero of mine, Scott Guthrie, doing the press release thang. 

We've been taking very small steps in the Silverlight direction for a month or so now (the fancy bits on Tourism sites are currently all Flash-based) but have yet to commit due to take-up rates of the Silverlight player--it's still early days on that front, despite decent penetration rates given the player's only been around for a year or so. The official press release claims Silverlight is installed on one out of every four desktops but the install base is as high as 50% in some countries. The Beijing olympics and a number of other high-profile partner sites are cited as major penetration drivers.

Flash has been around a lot longer and obviously has a greater penetration rate so I thought it would be useful to compare the number of global visitors to all of the Tourism WA eMarketplace sites running Silverlight versus the number running Flash. The results were pulled from Omniture and are as follows:

• 15% of visitors to the eMarketplace sites have Silverlight installed
  
• An average of 17.6% of internet users have Silverlight installed (so not quite one out four just yet)
  
• 101.6% of visitors to the eMarketplace sites have Flash installed (yes, 101.6%...)
• An average of 87.5% of internet users have Flash installed

I'll keep an eye on these stats and report back in another six months. 

Guthrie's a superstar and in typical Scott Gu fashion--despite being and MS VP, he's got a dandy blog post to get you started with Silverlight:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/10/14/silverlight-2-released.aspx

I'm planning to do some MOSS/Silverlight posts in the coming months to detail my experience integrating Silverlight with SharePoint and may even have a Silverlight web part available for download before long! Watch this space...

[Update: no cool Silverlight dev to report unfortunately :-( but I have posted current penetration stats along with some links to related posts of mine.]