[contextfree]

I think there's a very good chance that the Silverlight "brand" is going away. People think of it as a browser plugin and, whether rationally or not, popular opinion has turned against browser plugins.

Just like with Zune, the brand going away doesn't necessarily mean that the actual technical components are. (Did you know that the development platform behind the Microsoft "SPOT" smart watches initiative from a while back is still being actively maintained - they just released a new version with significant new features a few days ago? It's been repurposed and rebranded as the .NET Micro Framework, a competitor of sorts to Arduino, but the API namespaces still begin with Microsoft.SPOT!)

[browniepoints]

I'm not sure if they'll call it Silverlight (although I think it would be smart if they did), but the skills used in developing Silverlight applications will translate directly to the new platform.