Following hot on the heels of Apple’s iPhone SDK announcements, Sun has jumped into the fray and announced that they’ll be making sure that Java plays nice with Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch. The company famous for championing the standardized Java Runtime made the announcement after taking a look at the iPhone SDK. Upon investigating the possibility of porting the Java Virtual Machine for use on the iPhone, Sun found that they could indeed make it work – contrary to Steve Jobs’ statements about Java being a burden.
Sun’s Java marketing VP, Eric Klein announced the decision to bring Sun’s Java to the iPhone as a variant of the Java Micro Edition – a platform that is used on mobile phones. The iPhone SDK could be used to make the Sun Java Virtual Machine (JVM) run as an application. And, Sun said that there’s a likely possibility that Sun will optimize the Java Micro JVM to work with the iPhone’s more advanced features.
“We’re going to work to make sure that the [virtual machine] offers the Java applications as much access to the native functionality of the iPhone as possible,” Klein said. Furthermore, Klein leaves open the possibility of bringing a variant of the desktop-level Java Standard Edition to the iPhone (which might indicate that Sun will try to make use of the Jazelle technology that’s lying dormant in the iPhone’s CPU). And, Sun doesn’t exclude the possibility of bringing their Flash-replacement JavaFX (!) to the iPhone.
With Java on the iPhone and the SDK ready to roll, we’re crossing our fingers for some truly innovative applications in the near future. Applications (web or native), Java, and a bit of VPN fairy-dust could extend the iPhone’s enterprise role well-beyond what Microsoft Enterprise support could ever hope to do.
Then, combine Java, secure VPNs, and some web-apps or native applications with the prospect of connecting the iPhone to a wireless mouse and keyboard (and then connect it to an external monitor), and you’ve got the makings of a seriously sleek and powerful mobile computer. Sure, there are other devices that might be able to do the keyboard and external monitor thing, and there are even UMPCs out there with mobile computing clearly in their job-description. But all those solutions are either awkwardly bulky, too big, or just plain ugly – there’s no mobile computing solution that’s as sleek, slim and generally chic as the iPhone.
Bring on the enterprise market! I’m not a business user, but I think I’ll be riding that wave all the way to shore – maybe on a 3G iPhone. (Oh, and keep in mind that we’re not just talking about the limited first-gen iPhone – that second-gen iPhone should really stir the pot)
[Via: InfoWorld]