A recent article in InfoWorld attempted to tie the current economic downturn directly to the future success of Silverlight 2.0 adoption.  My opinion is that this argument is pretty flawed.  

For starters, since the October 2008 launch of Silverlight 2.0 it has been installed on over 300 million consumer PCs (or one in four), mostly the result of major events such as the Beijing Olympics (upgrades from 1.0), the new Netflix Watch Instantly services, The Democratic National Convention, and the Presidential Inauguration on CBS.  Montalbano’s argument that the adoption rate for Silverlight will be impacted by the cutback in corporate IT budgets makes little sense to me since most enterprise applications would not be the major driving factor for adoption. 

Flash did not earn its near 100% adoption of its previous player, or its now 45% adoption of player 10 through corporate IT department projects.  It earned it through browser bundling, advertising, YouTube, and online media focused on the consumer.  Silverlight will continue to gain adoption just fine during this economic downturn, as people will want more entertainment at home and via the web. 

In addition, my experience shows that as things quiet down in IT departments due to budget cuts, developers will begin to re-train and try out new technologies.  This downturn might give some more Microsoft camp developers the time they need to train-up on Silverlight and try out some new ideas so they are ready for the next wave of projects.