One of the early hits on .NET development was that you needed to download the framework because it wasn't on the underlying operating system.  Thus if you wrote a .NET application for the general public, for it to work you would have to have them install the full framework.  The consensus amoung many was you wouldn't want to create a desktop application that relied on .NET.  Of course that was several years ago and while it still seems to be held by a few short sighted writers, the reality is that .NET applications are appearing in the public arena.  In the past 2 months of the 3 applications I've installed two of them were .NET applications.  The first was for Sirius satellite radio and streaming audio.  The benefit of being able to crank out an application in a fraction of the time required to write all that streaming logic using something like C++ undoubtedly played a major role.  The second application is called SplashStream - it's focus, you guessed it streaming video, in this case video associated with the TSTN training that I talked about.  The application streams the course content and provides a basic schedule UI.  As PCs focus less and less on supporting a browser and running Office and more on video, audio and photo content I expect this trend to continue.   Just for disclosure - the other application I installed Microsoft Active Sync (which reminds me every morning of the fact that I haven't associated with a device...) 

(By the way I'm also on a project with a .NET 2.0 Smart Client application which is sent out into the world at large...)