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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Prognosticator who wrote (44912)	9/3/2001 5:41:19 PM
From: Bill Fischofer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Re: Java Last I heard Java remains a cost center rather than a profit center for SUNW. In many ways SUNW faces the same dilemma with Java that WIND does with VxWorks. The only way to get widespread acceptance of its licensing terms is to lower the per-unit rates to a point where in the aggregate they don't add up to much. For example, assume a billion Java-based smart cards will be distributed over the next decade. At 25 cents royalty per card (probably a generously high estimate) that's $25 million a year to SUNW, which makes it little more than a footnote to SUNW's balance sheet. Run different royalty rates and unit volumes for other devices, but there's just no way one can spin Java as a significant source of revenue and/or profits for a company that's already doing close to $20 billion a year in sales. The main hope for Java has always been "hardware drag", but the conflict between a "platform independent" language that somehow retains a "platform advantage" is difficult to explain.