Despite Adobe Flash's dominance in the world of rich Internet applications, Microsoft's competing offering, Silverlight, is expected to triple its market share, according to a market researcher.

In an interview with eWEEK, John Andrews, president and CEO of Evans Data, said that over the next 12 to 18 months, Silverlight should triple its market share.

"Flash is the incumbent, the leader," Andrews said. "If you look at Flex, AIR [Adobe Integrated Runtime], Silverlight and Eclipse RCP [Rich Client Platform], all of them have smaller market share. But if you look at the next 12 to 18 months, they just about double their current market share. And interesting enough, Silverlight almost triples. Silverlight is very, very popular with this Web 2.0 technology developer."

Andrews based his claims on Evans Data research.

He also said much of the success Silverlight will see will be not only due to Microsoft marketing but to the fact that "Microsoft supports its products very well.”

Moreover, “many people think about Microsoft as not the innovator—which they aren't in many cases—but, boy, they're the fastest follower you can find,” Andrews said. “When you look at developer support and quality of product, and then you look at how those products tie back into the stack so easily, it really facilitates the productivity of these developers."