When you drill down into Motorola’s J2ME specs underlying the i85 Java Phone, you finally get to a Java Virtual Machine used called Sun’s CVM. Continued drilling down into what’s behind CVM finally gets to the following download site:
sun.com
You will notice that Sun’s CVM comes in two flavors: Linux and VxWorks.
Now, from a recent survey of 500 wireless developers (reported below), 33% are targeting J2ME, 24.5% Palm and 22.3 Win CE. If you assume a 50-50 split between Linux and VxWorks, this suggests WIND’s out-of-the-box market share of next-generation 2.5G and 3G devices will be about 13%. This happens to agree EXACTLY with the guess I made for WIND’s market share next year (FY 2003) for the Wireless Hand-Held Internet Devices Lily Pond.
java.sun.com
The Wireless Hand-Held Internet Devices Lily Pond does not meet true lily pond specs, and was only included originally because a small share of a huge pond is notable and worth tracking – and because of the potential for the WIND’s share to increase over time. Another lily pond requirement Wireless Hand-Held Internet Devices fails to satisfy is that the product be established. The reason for the latter is to suppress excess speculation, which apparently is exactly what happened in the 3G space.
The $100 billion or so paid by European Telcos for 3G spectrum, which implied an immediate and huge build-out of 3G in Europe has backfired. It turns out that the debt piled on by European Telcos has nearly sunk their respective boats, contributing significantly to the worldwide crash in teleco stocks. In any case, it now appears the 3G build-out will proceed much slower in Europe and in the U.S. than expected last year. In stark contrast, the Japanese have assigned 3G spectrum at minimal cost to their telecommunications sector, with the pleasant result that 3G is developing rapidly there, as hopefully it will elsewhere in Asia.
The potential for the Wireless Hand-Held Internet Devices Lily Pond remains so large, I still think we need to continue tracking it as a lily pond, especially since WIND may start out with a noticeable market share. However, the next update no doubt will result in lowered expectations for unit shipments.
Allen |
