In a big-ticket tie-up, Nokia has announced plans to make Microsoft Silverlight available for S60 on Symbian OS, as well as for Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets.

Adding support for Silverlight, which is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in, would extend opportunities for developers to create rich, interactive applications to run on multiple platforms. Silverlight is incidentally Microsoft's answer to Adobe's Flash technology.

Microsoft will be demonstrating Silverlight on S60 during the keyote at its MIX08 conference on March 5 in Las Vegas. The plug-in is expected to be available to S60 developers later this year, and availability for Series 40 devices and Internet tablets will be confirmed even later.

Microsoft also plans to make the Windows Mobile version of Silverlight available later this year. The main features of Silverlight, including video and interactive Web application development, will be available in all mobile versions.

In a separate announcement, Nokia has announced that its much awaited N-Gage gaming service will be available in a couple of weeks on five select Nokia devices.

Nokia delayed the gaming service twice last year due to software testing. Initially, the service will be made available on five N-Series devices, including N81, N81 8GB, N95, N95 8GB, and N82.

Nokia is expected to make 25 to 30 games available for N-Gage by mid-2008, and add the same number of titles in the second half of the year.