Apple’s iPhone’s (News - Alert) will soon get a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) to be developed by Sun Microsystems. The JVM will enable a lot of Java applications to be run on the iPhone. Sun plans to release the JVM shortly after June.
After pondering the disinterest by Apple (News - Alert) to enable Java on its iPhone, Sun decided it will release the JVM itself. Previously, Apple had released a SDK for the iPhone. Eric Klein, vice president of Java marketing at Sun said, “The JVM is to be based on the Java Micro Edition (ME) version of Java.”
With the JVM, the iPhone would be open as a target platform. Third parties can get their free JVM through Apple’s AppStore. Eric Klein also said, “Once our JVM is on the phone, we anticipate that a large number of Java applications would run on the phone. We’re going to make sure that the JVM offers the Java applications as much access to the native functionality of the iPhone as possible.”
Apple released the SDK in conjunction with the beta release if its iPhone 2.0 software; the general release of iPhone 2.0 is scheduled for June. The SDK’s public statements have nothing in it to stop JVM being enabled as one of the many other applications in the iPhone. Sun concluded itself that it will prepare the JVM for the iPhone after looking into the information in the said SDK.
Chris Silva, an analyst in Forrester (News - Alert) Research said, “By bringing the JVM to the iPhone, Java capabilities in area such as SSL security could be brought to Apple’s platform. I think going forward, with the SDK, it takes out of Apple’s control which applications are ‘right’ for the iPhone.”
JVM will as also support Apple’s iTouch, which has all the features of the iPhone except telephony. Not just Java games, but applications like ERP or CRM, could be brought into the iPhone by developers using the Java virtual machine.
Eric Kelin also talked about the future plans Sun has with JVM. “Future plans could include extending more sophisticated Java Standard Edition (SE) and JavaFX technologies to the iPhone. It’s a new platform for us. We might be able to bring additional technologies onto the iPhone and the iTouch,” he said.
Until the release of JVM, developers were finding it hard to get their built applications into the iPhone.
It is a notable statement that Sun urged Apple to consider Java for iPhone and one of Sun Microsystems (News - Alert) executive called Apple’s stance on Java a mistake. Apple however had not yet released or said anything about Sun’s plans for the iPhone.
Nathesh is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Nathesh’s articles, please visit his columnist page.
For all the latest enterprise IP communications, unified communications, and contact center news, please click here.
More information here.....
No comments:
Post a Comment