Sun: Better Linux than MS
wired.com
Gentile concedes that enabling Java on Linux could cost Sun some Solaris customers, but "a Linux sale is better than a Microsoft sale."
Gentile said that since a large percentage of Linux sales are on Intel rather than Sun hardware, the effect on Sun's bottom line will be minimal.
To recruit more Java developers, Sun is offering deep discounts -- up to 75 percent -- on both hardware and software.
On Tuesday, the company released the Micro Edition of the Java 2 platform to get an upper hand in the wide open software market for pagers, handheld computers, digital set-top boxes, and automobile accessories.
Mike Clary, a Sun vice president, said that Java is a better platform for appliance developers because it is "operating-system agnostic" and will run on any type of device, while Windows CE has stringent requirements for the processors, memory, and user interface.
Clary said that the Palm Pilot, for which Sun released Java software this week, outsells all Windows CE-based handheld devices by a wide margin. "The Palm Pilot is the perfect example of a narrow purpose device. It does one or two things well, and that's it," said Clary.
Clary stressed that Sun will not manufacture consumer electronic devices like cell phones or pagers. "If Sun designed this," he said, pointing to his Motorola pager, "we'd have come up with something way too big and clunky."
Clary added that at JavaOne, the company has conscientiously downplayed its JINI initiative for connecting consumer devices because they wanted a single message to get through: Java is a superior platform to Windows for servers, desktops, and appliances. |
