J2ME is the most highly deployed application platform that exists today. Any mobile phone with a color screen and two soft keys, even the one that has been living in that back of your desk drawer since Clinton’s second term, probably has support for J2ME applications. Some of the best J2ME apps are Google Maps, Google Mail and Opera Mini and … well that’s all. Making money off writing J2ME applications is close to impossible, just ask any developer. Smart phone operating systems are where the cash money is, but don’t tell that to Nokia, who just released version 2.0 of their Java runtime for S60.
It’s beta, so excuse the bugs, but it only runs on S60 5th Edition, and from the first two comments from Tommi Vilkamo’s blog post, people are complaining about the large amount of internal memory the installation requires. This new version is supposed to allow one click installs, reduced application load times, and increased performance. Fascinating, but what about making those engineers work on something important like the next version of Symbian or making Ovi suck less?
Is there something wrong with today’s J2ME engine? Not really!