DNA

• Its India centre will develop mobile version of Silverlight

Hyderabad, Aug 13: Around 100 techies at Microsoft’s India Development Centre (IDC) are punching code at a feverish pitch to rollout a mobile version of the software giant’s proprietary Internet Explorer plug-in, Silverlight, which enables viewing of rich media content over the web.

However, officials at the IDC refused to divulge timelines for the launch of the mobile version of the software. It kicked off with a proof-of-concept on the Beijing Olympics on the NBC Olympics website this week.

The IDC marked the completion of a decade since it set shop here with the opening a new 2,000-seat facility.

Pitted against Adobe Inc’s Flash Player, Silverlight allows streaming of video and interactive applications such as video games on both Macintosh and Windows PC users, all within a fixed window inside the web browser display.

For instance the NBC-MSN Olympic offering enables users to watch on demand content simultaneously with other picture-in-picture (PIP), content on the website without having to minimise one’s browser.

Now, the engineers at the MS IDC are working to bring a similar experience to the mobile handset.

The next version of the Windows mobile platform, the WinMobile 7, will be integrated with Silverlight Mobile.

IDC is also working on a version for Nokia smartphones, which will be launched subsequently, said Somesegar, who leads the teams responsible for providing tools and platform technologies for software development at Microsoft.

S Somesegar, head developer division, Microsoft Corp, said the IDC placed two big bets last year, kicking off work on mobile technologies and testing tools.

“We see the 2.4 billion global installed base of mobile phones as a major opportunity and intend using Silverlight to exploit it,” he said.

This is not the first time the MS IDC, which boasts of 1,500 software engineers, has worked on mobile technologies. It developed the WAP and SMS search for mobile phones launched in India with Vodafone and the direction search launched globally earlier.

The IDC has the end-to-end responsibility for around 50 major Microsoft products, features and technologies and has contributed to about 220 patents that the world’s largest software company has filed. It has the total ownership of at least six major products launched by Microsoft over the past few years.