Sun plans to launch JavaFX Mobile on Thursday, the second of a three-stage debut of technology it hopes will ease software design while modernising its Java technology.
JavaFX Mobile is a software layer that handles user-interface elements such as graphics and animations on mobile phones. It is closely related to the JavaFX for desktops and laptops introduced in December and the JavaFX version for TVs that is still not released.
Sun is also announcing a few partners it has lined up to endorse the technology: mobile-phone makers Sony Ericsson and LG Electronics, mobile-phone network operators Sprint and Orange, and software providers Cynergy and MobiTV. Param Singh, senior director of Java marketing at Sun, predicts JavaFX could ship in phones in late 2009, but certainly in 2010.
With JavaFX, Sun wants to make it easier to create Java programs with slick user interfaces. When the technology arrives, phone users will "see applications that look great, that are very expressive, but that also are very functional," Singh predicted.
With Java, Sun put Microsoft on the defensive and won over millions of programmers. But the technology now faces innumerable competitors — Microsoft's similar .Net technology among them — and plenty of other high-profile challenges.
In the mobile arena, Apple's iPhone doesn't support Java at all. Adobe is working on a version of Flash 10 for mobile phones, and Google's Android operating system uses a version of Java that strays from the official industry fold, called the Java Community Process. Nokia has its Symbian operating system, and Palm is trying again with its own.
However, Sun has more than a foothold. Java has had a decade to get established on mobile phones and, despite problems such as the fragmentation that means a given Java program won't necessarily run on a given Java handset, it is widely available. Sun estimates it is available on 2.6 billion phones.
Sun is aiming JavaFX at a broader market than the smartphone arena, where much of the action is happening — it is also targeting the 'feature phones' that are a notch above voice-only models.
"We see growth in the feature-phone segment in emerging market. The growth in the US and Silicon Valley is in the high-end smartphones that everyone carries, but that's not the majority of the world," Singh said.
JavaFX handles a number of chores for creating mobile-phone applications, but it doesn't do everything. Sun also plans to announce that JavaFX Mobile can work hand-in-hand with its earlier Java Micro Edition technology when it's time to tap directly into mobile phone subsystems such as its Bluetooth communication technology, its camera, or its GPS location system.
Sun also is announcing that the JavaFX software development kit will include an emulator to test JavaFX Mobile software even without a JavaFX Mobile device.
