Kurt Shintaku's Blog

It bears repeating: 

NO, Silverlight is not going away.

In terms of Microsoft’s official response, it has been very consistent since questions in this area first surfaced:

• 2010-09-01: http://team.silverlight.net/announcement/the-future-of-silverlight/
• 2010-11-04: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/11/04/silverlight-questions.aspx
• 2010-11-01: http://team.silverlight.net/announcement/pdc-and-silverlight/
• 2011-04-04: http://team.silverlight.net/announcement/standards-based-web-plug-ins-and-silverlight/

A friend in our Developer & Platform Evangelism group, as an attempt to clarify and dispel the doubts without going into too much detail, wrote the following:

• There are a lot of things Microsoft did not mention in our recent announcements with Windows 8 (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2011/jun11/06-01corporatenews.aspx) and the BUILD conference (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2011/06/01/building-a-bright-future.aspx), which Mary Jo-Foley based much of her opinions on. But that does not imply the technologies not highlighted are being de-emphasized or phased out
  
• Silverlight, latest in version 5 beta, has a lot more capabilities than HTML, and will continue to be developed and enhanced to stretch the boundaries of a cross-platform application platform. It will continue to be innovated at a faster pace than HTML and JavaScript
  
• Microsoft has always focused on bringing optimized solutions for addressable problem spaces; not really about one-size-fits-all. Silverlight and HTML5 have some overlaps, but they also differentiate in some areas. It’s important to understand the project requirements and then choose the appropriate technology. In general, rich and more complex apps that are not intended for mass consumption are ideally suited for Silverlight (more robust dev tools, runtime, performance, security models, app compatibility, manageability, and richer user experiences, etc.). Apps that are intended for mass consumption (e.g., public-facing websites for millions of users) that need enhanced user experiences from what HTML4 offers today, should use HTML5
  
• Silverlight is also being optimized as the native application platform across Windows-based devices (it will still work on MacOS and Linux; just Microsoft using Silverlight on more device platforms) – such as Windows desktop, Windows Phone, and more to come (thus Microsoft’s own dependency on it is increasing)