Hi Robert: SUNW gets into Haim's cell phone!
Sun serves up Java on cell phones
By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
September 18, 2000, 6:05 p.m. PT
After years of programming, evangelism and corporate wrangling, Sun
Microsystems and its business partners have created a standard for
putting Sun's Java software into cell phones, the company will announce
tomorrow.
The standard, called the mobile information device profile (MIDP), will be used in
cell phones from Motorola, Nokia, LG Electronics, Nextel and NTT DoCoMo, Sun
said. It will also be used in handhelds from Research in Motion, Sun said.
In addition, several telecommunications companies
including SmarTone, EasTone, Telefonica and One 2 One
will offer back-end services that the cell phones can tap
into, the company said.
These Java-enabled services, though in the most nascent
stages, indicate that the technology is finally entering the
real world after years of being consigned to white papers,
marketing plans and proof-of-concept demonstrations.
The services will allow cell phones to tout new information
feeds or services. Tracking down the nearest Burger King
over the Internet, playing games online or creating charts of
daily stock performance are some of the possible
applications, said Eric Chu, director of product marketing
for Sun's consumer and embedded Java products.
"In Asia, entertainment is the killer service," Chu said.
"Some of these devices come with games, but the problem
is you get bored. By having Java technology in the device,
you can now flash out any games you're bored with and download new games."
Sun's Java software, at least theoretically, allows programs to run on a variety of
computing devices without having to be rewritten for each one. Theoretically, a
programmer wouldn't have to tailor a service nine times for nine different cell phone
makers. After its invention in the 1990s, Java caught on first as a way to spruce up
Web pages, then as a way to power e-commerce servers.
But for years, Java hasn't worked on small
gadgets with limited memory and processing
power. Sun has been stripping down Java
while waiting for the gadgets to get bigger
screens and faster chips.
Palo Alto, Calif.-based Sun is pushing to get
Java's steaming-cup-of-coffee logo onto gadgets as well, hoping that consumers
soon will associate the logo with "really cool services," company executives have
said.
The Java software competes with Windows, the operating system that Microsoft is
trying to shrink to fit handheld computers and augment for powerful servers. In the
Microsoft vision of the future, programs will run atop Windows instead of Java. But
that's a vision Microsoft has had only modest success in making a reality.
Sun hopes Java will make money chiefly by fostering new markets for powerful
servers at telecommunications companies or other service providers. These are
the servers from which games, stock quotes or restaurant locations will be
downloaded.
But Sun also makes money from licensing its Java technology. Using the Java
brand requires that a company pass Java compatibility tests to make sure it works
properly.
"Not only are we making money in terms of revenue on the handset, we're also very
much focused on getting business on the back end as well," Chu said.
The constraints on how fast current second-generation, or "2G," mobile phones
can transfer data limits the amount of processing that can be handled on a central
server, Chu said. With those bandwidth constraints, it's more feasible to send the
cell phone compact information, such as a description of how to display a Web
page, and to let the cell phone's processor handle the creation of the actual image,
he said.
LG Telecom has been offering entertainment software over its Java-enabled
system, Chu said. "They're bringing in people to write games and even silly things
like wallpaper and screensavers," he said.
NTT DoCoMo plans to offer entertainment such as interactive gaming by the end of
the year, he said, but it also will offer mobile commerce options.
Companies also like the Java technology because it allows them to easily display
the company logo, and potentially advertisements, on cell phone screens, Chu
said.
Other companies that plan to introduce MIDP-enabled devices or services include
Sony, Symbian, Matsushita, Siemens and NEC, Sun said. The MIDP standard,
based on Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME), was developed collaboratively by more
than 20 such companies. |
