Java for the Cell Phone
Wired News Report
wired.com
7:35 a.m. 17.Mar.99.PST
Java is coming to the mobile phone, in a big way.
Partners in British-based Symbian, the alliance between the world's biggest cell-phone manufacturers, said on Wednesday that the Sun computer language would become part of the standard operating platform for a new generation of mobile communications devices.
Symbian is led by British palm-top computer company Psion, and includes wireless giants Motorola (MOT), Ericsson (ERICZ), and Nokia.
Sun chief executive Scott McNealy, appearing at the CeBIT technology conference in Hanover, Germany, said the agreement would mean 40 to 60 million mobile phones and handheld computers would be using Sun's Java software in the next five years.
Java is a computer language that lets programmers write an application once to run on a wide variety of communications devices -- such as the smart, new generation mobile phones with data capabilities -- regardless of their operating system. McNealy said the agreement was just one more example of Java's huge potential.
"We are moving from hundreds of millions to literally billions of devices running the Java platform," McNealy said.
Psion said it expected to launch EPOC-based, Java-enabled products during the second half of 1999 and said it was demonstrating products running Java at CeBIT this week.
Ericsson estimates that the world market for mobile telephones will surge to around 800 million subscribers by 2003 from 306 million at the end of 1998, with handheld devices providing Internet access accounting for 10 to 15 percent of the market by 2001.
Symbian was formed in 1998 partly to fight the likes of US software giant Microsoft (MSFT) and its rival operating system Windows CE. The alliance is signing a string of non-exclusive technology agreements to help feed the expected consumer appetite for handheld devices with data applications.
Earlier this week, the group signed a memorandum of understanding with Japanese telecom giant NTT DoCoMo to research and develop a range of new wireless communications technologies.
Symbian licencees hold 70 to 80 percent of the world market for cell phones. |
