Beautiful day in Sydney.
I came out of this morning’s Tech Days session on Java ME applications with a whole bunch of questions – they’re much more fun than answers.
The latest version of JME now contains heaps of APIs for everything from geolocation to bluetooth and is supported by millions of mobiles, and will continue to be so. The implementations are open sourced through phoneME (CDLC) and phoneME advanced (CDC). Anyone who has played with Java ME will soon realise that building apps is a real pain in the ass as every device supports different versions.
Now the Open Handset Alliance led by Google comes along with Android derived from Java but a different platform altogether, even though some of the java.lang libraries are supported. It lauds a bunch of features like geolocation and bluetooth (which are already part of JavaME). There’s a lot of feel-good talk about openness and freedom.
To me it seems that it only compounds the platform/version fragmentation issue and will become a problem to application developers who try to reach the largest possible market. This was an obvious concern at question time. People don’t know which horse to back here when starting out in mobile development. Chances are that app developers are having a bigger problem. Is this another HD-DVD/BlueRay scenario?
What features does Android provide that JavaME does not? On the surface to the casual observer they are almost the same.
But the big question here is why is OHA/Google going against the grain and building their own mobile platform?
Java ME use is still growing and expanding to new embedded devices like Sun Spots. Companies don’t invest millions on technology just for the fun of it. Technology uptake is painfully slow in the wild and even if every vendor dropped JME today in favour of Android, it would take years for it to get a majority of market share. Having said that, it may not be that Android’s end goal is mobile product or technology specific at all. Are Google et al attempting to force licensing change from Sun? Maybe Android set top boxes? It looks like a stepping stone that is part of a larger strategy.
Food for thought – the best thing to come out of conferences.