Hi, In February last year, Sun released JavaFX Mobile, running on top of JavaME (though with just one UI component which was rectified in the later release at JavaOne, I believe). At that time, SonyEriccson and LG were mentioned as device partners (and they still are considered that: http://javafx.com/partners/details/device_manufacturers.jsp). I wrote back then that I was disappointed that no phones were announced. Tor responded in an episode that Sun can't announce phones, the vendors have to.
But where are the phones? I search both manufacturers web sites for "JavaFX" but couldn't find anything. To the best of my knowledge, there's no JavaFX Mobile phone out there - or is it? Regardless, the competition doesn't sleep: - Nokia teamed up with Adobe last February to sponsor Flash apps with a 10 Mio. fund (http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Online/News/Adobe-and- Nokia-Provide-10-Million-Fund-for-Mobile-Flash-Development). Still the biggest mobile phone vendor in the world, Nokia still has mobile clout. - Adobe announced in October that they'll bring the full Flash Player 10.1 to Android, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile, Blackberry and even Symbian, including support for hardware video acceleration and touch / acceleration support on some platforms (like Android or Windows 7) in 2010 (http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/10/flash-101-coming-to- just-about-every-platform-but-iphone.ars). Even the iPhone will get some Flash support with the upcoming Flash CS 5 cross-compiling into native iPhone apps (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/ appsfor_iphone/). - RIM announced in November that Adobe authoring tools will be enhanced for Blackberry development (http://www.blackberrycool.com/ 2009/11/09/rim-announce-adobe-flash-support-coming-to-blackberry/). - From the "they are still around?" department: AT&T wants to use JavaME competitor BREW to bring apps to "feature phones" (non- smartphones); see http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/06/att_to_release_android_webos_devicesnew_app_platform.html. - Microsoft hasn't made their mobile move, yet - maybe they do at the next Mix conference. The mobile developer focus and buzz clearly is on the iPhone and other smartphones (like Android). So that "mythical" installed base of billions of JavaME-capable phones that could theoretically run JavaFX Mobile to me isn't that much of an advantage since it'll always be hard to develop for thousands of different phone models with different screen sizes, computing power and input mechanisms, running on top of often buggy JavaME stacks. And the Java store for mobile apps isn't even in public beta yet, with the desktop Java store still in beta, and only for the US in that matter. Developers like the powerful and rather homogeneous iPhone and Android platforms (Blackberry is more of a mess, I hear, and Windows Mobile is harder still; Symbian is just a giantic hairball). The layoffs at Sun and the uncertainty around the Oracle take-over probably haven't helped matters, either (though Adobe went through two 10% layoffs at the end of 2008 and 2009, too). If I was Sun then I would build JavaFX Mobile as a stack on top of smartphone OS, similar to Flash Player 10.1, and forget about these JavaME phones - developers for the most part don't care about them. This would be the second re-birth of JavaFX Mobile (it started out in 2007 as a complete mobile OS, born out of the assets of SavaJe - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SavaJe).
-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
