I’ve been contacted by a couple of potential customers about how the AIR story compete with Silverlight. This has also come up at several talk i’ve done recently. I am not an Adobe or Flash guy so I may be the wrong one to broach the subject, but it feels like they are not necessary competing. In a large way it feels like Microsoft is trying to get into the web space and compete for RIA, whereas AIR seems to be attempting to get onto the desktop.
From my casual observation, AIR is solution looking for a problem. AIR in some ways is the second attempt by Flash to get on the desktop but the last time they tried this it was a bad experience for users. I am not sure this is true now as the web is the real story IMHO. In fact, AIR seems poised to fight with Java (write-once, run-anywhere) and Google Gears (write for the web, run it offline). I don’t know that Silverlight is a competitor here (though you never know what MS has in store for us at MIX next week).
AIR and Flex seem to be gunning for WPF or XBAP in the Microsoft world but not Silverlight.
Where do you think it fits?
