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As reported in the previous post, Microsoft on Monday announced that it is ready to distribute its Silverlight 2 media player. The download’s going to be available from Tuesday, having new features of: support for digital rights management technology, improved cross-platform support and deep zoom technology.

Along-side this announcement Microsoft also disclosed a range of new partners which include AOL, Blockbuster, CBS College Sports, Toyota, and Yahoo Japan. Whereas there was also a mention of the statistics from the Olympics (in partnership with NBC), where in over a 17-day period NBCOlympics.com attracted more than 50 million unique visitors, resulting in 1.3 billion page views, 70 million video streams, and 600 million minutes of video watched.

Microsoft stated that the effort gave a boost to Silverlight’s U.S. penetration, by 30 percent. Scott Guthrie, Microsoft developer unit VP, stated:

“We launched Silverlight just over a year ago, and already one in four consumers worldwide has access to a computer with Silverlight already installed.”

Though Silverlight still has a long way to go in competition with Adobe’s Flash, these efforts will certainly accelerate its growth.

Guthrie further said:

“Certainly coming out with a new browser plug-in is an ambitious project.” and

“We knew it was going to take a couple of years to get where we need to be.”

Silverlight is available on HP PCs, with talks of having it on the iPhone are underway with Apple (and Google’s G1 Android phone will be looked at in the near future).