A new platform for wireless: Sun releases mobile version of JavaFX: Wireless application developers have another option

Sun Microsystems Inc. is hoping to bridge the gap between smartphones and feature phones with a new platform targeting mid- and lower-end devices.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based developer unveiled the mobile version of JavaFX, an offering designed to run atop Java ME (Mobile Edition) as well as on handsets running more sophisticated operating systems. Sun first unveiled JavaFX nearly two years ago and last year released desktop SDKs for the platform for both Microsoft Corp. Windows and Apple Inc. Macintosh computers.
JavaFX is widely seen as a competitor to online multimedia technologies such as Adobe Systems Inc.’s Flash, Microsoft’s Silverlight and Apple’s QuickTime. Adobe has worked to bring Flash into mobile, with limited success in the Far East. Verizon Wireless is also rolling out mobile Flash on some of its handsets.
Sun backed the mobile rollout of JavaFX with a half-dozen industry players including handset manufacturers (Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications and LG Electronics Co. Ltd.), carriers (Orange and Sprint Nextel Corp.) and developers (Cynergy, a builder of Web applications, and MobiTV).
Making it simple
“What we’re trying to achieve with JavaFX is to make it easier for people to create rich, immersive content and bring it to as many people as possible,” said Jacob Lehrbaum, a JavaFX senior product line manager at Sun. “We’re giving developers the same exact set of tools (for mobile and desktop development). It’s really the first platform that allows you to do this; it makes it simple for people to create content across these devices.”
Part of JavaFX’s appeal to developers, Lehrbaum said, is that it provides one set of APIs (application programming interface) that address every component of modern mobile phones. And it doesn’t hurt that Java ME is available on 2.6 billion phones, giving it unsurpassed reach in wireless.
“It’s driven people crazy in the past that they need different APIs for the accelerometer, the camera, even for relatively basic things like accessing information from the device,” Lehrbaum continued. “Many of the devices on the market have different characteristics. There are reasons you’re going to want to optimize the experience for the device.”
More promises
Developers may think they’ve heard this tune from Sun before – and they have. The company originally touted Java as the ideal cross-platform foundation, enabling developers to build to a single application and deploy it across phones, computers and other gadgets. But that scenario failed to materialize, thanks largely to a wide range of mobile phones and other devices with different screen sizes, form factors and levels of processing power – not to mention networks, languages and other variables.
Those limitations have resulted in onerous porting costs for mobile application developers, hindering the market for mobile games and other applications. While JavaFX won’t alleviate porting costs entirely, Sun hopes to lure desktop developers to the platform with Java’s broad reach in mobile and new tools that help them build more immersive offerings for mass-market phones.
Which isn’t to say that Sun is giving up on the smartphone market. Lehrbaum stressed that JavaFX is platform-independent, which will be crucial as new, multimedia-friendly platforms such as Apple’s iPhone, Google Inc.’s Android, Nokia Corp.’s Symbian and – maybe – Palm Inc.’s WebOS gain traction.
“Certainly in the future I would expect this space to be more and more crowded,” Lehrbaum predicted. “There are many more choices in terms of the OS platforms today than there were a year or two ago. Now we’ve got five, six, seven, eight. . But we actually see that as an opportunity for JavaFX, because we can run across all of them.”
Whether developers will back the new mobile platform is questionable, however. New smartphone storefronts such as Apple’s App Store and Android Market have granted developers unprecedented access directly to mobile consumers, bypassing cumbersome carrier decks and costly carrier revenue-share models. But analysts generally agree that increased use of multimedia services among smartphone users will trickle down to lower-tier devices, exposing users to applications beyond simple voice and SMS. And with billions of Java-running phones already in the hands of consumers, – and plenty of Java developers already in the stable – JavaFX may find traction as high-tech mobile applications become mainstream.