The status of JavaFX Mobile is indeed obscure, but that's partly because the entire Mobile market is still spinning like a decapitated chicken. 2009 was a year of revolution with releases like Android and PalmPre, announcements like Flash and Silverlight for mobile, even JavaFX that's curiously ahead of its RIA-mobile competition at least in some ways (its WinMob port is available and FCS; just not bundled yet in new phones, but that's a hair better than things like Flash 10.1 which are not even released). There is uncertainty in many fronts, for one thing some pundits think Adobe's CS5->iPhone was just a marketing stunt as Apple won't let it through the AppStore. And even if it does, this is not a full replacement for plain Flash support in iPhone's Safari. Will be interesting to watch if Apple can resist this pressure, as all other smartphones will have a full-featured browser including Flash.
Then, there's the concurrent war of application stores - Apple's, Android's, Nokia's, Sun's; everybody wants to be the gatekeeper and collect 30% of all mobile app/media business. And there's the global leader that is Nokia, and invests in more platforms I can enumerate - they have Symbian, they have Qt, they have Maemo, they still have tons of phones with JavaME, every other week there's some rumor about a Nokia WinMob|Android phone|tablet; Nokia will carry Flash 10.1, Nokia will carry Silverlight for Mobile. It's a big mess. (The only sure thing is that whatever Microsoft will announce won't make any difference - WinMob 7 will suck as usual, and even if it doesn't, the next iPhone will humiliate it as usual.) As for JavaFX (Mobile or not), the big question is how much Oracle believes in it. Oracle does have enough deep pockets to just buy how many mobile partners they need, it's as simple as that. Maybe some device makers that would normally have agreed to ship FX, didn't do that just because they are waiting for the Oracle/Sun deal to close so they can milk a fatter cow. A+ Osvaldo On 15 jan, 09:28, Karsten Silz <[email protected]> wrote: > 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); > seehttp://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/06/att_to_release_android_.... > > - 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 - > seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SavaJe).
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