Silverlight web application framework from Microsoft has now been shaped for mobile phone handsets based on the Symbian mobile OS.

The company claims of releasing the app for Nokia 5800, N97 and N97 mini devices and also, the fifth edition of Nokia's S60 Symbian Linux-based mobile phone OS.

However on the contrary Microsoft's own smartphone platform, Windows Mobile, at present offers no support for Silverlight or even Adobe's Flash.

The offering of Symbian is supposedly deemed as a measure of promotion on rival devices that falls just before the launch of its own Windows Phone 7.

Reports from ZD Net UK state that Silverlight for Symbian offered by Microsoft has a support for H. 264 video format that currently is being used by YouTube and Microsoft's IIS Smooth Streaming extension.

This indicates that developers can have media-rich Silverlight applications for the 20 million users of Nokia 5800 and N97 handsets.