Sun Microsystems said on Thursday it has started to ship JavaFX software for mobile phones, hoping to benefit from its open source and cross-technology offerings in a booming wireless software market.
The focus of the cellphone market has been shifting to software development since Google and Apple entered the mobile market in the past two years.
The world's third-largest cellphone maker LG Electronics said it would be the first to deliver JavaFX enabled phone. No. 4 handset firm Sony Ericsson said in a statement ahead of the Mobile World Congress trade show next week in Barcelona it would bring JavaFX to a significant part of its products.
Sun's original Java is the most common software platform in mobile phones, working across different operating systems, but its basic functionalities, which shun more advanced applications, have limited its appeal among software developers. "JavaFX is a layer on top of Java, designed to make Java much more powerful and also more approachable. It was time to take it up a level," Eric Klein, vice president for marketing of Java, told Reuters in an interview. Klein said while Java works on almost all cellphones - it is on 2.6 billion phones across the world - JavaFX would work only on mid-range and high-end phones, putting it in more direct rivalry with leading operating systems.
Sun hopes its new, easier-to-use development tools and access to all cellphones, not limited to certain operating system, will boost JavaFX takeup among software developers, resulting in more attractive applications. The market for software platforms on cellphones is led by Nokia's Symbian operating system, but it has lost a lot of ground over the last year to Apple and Research in Motion and other newcomers.
"In a time of increasing number of operating systems what developers need is a consistent platform which runs across all operating systems," Klein said. For developers of mobile software, such as games makers, the variety of operating systems mean higher costs as they need to produce a number of software versions for the different systems.
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