I was just reading the slides presented from the kick-off meeting of the Eclipse Mobile Industry Working Group. I believe this is the first working group at Eclipse and I think it's a great concept. Bring groups of companies together that are interested in the same or similar technologies and do some planning. Hopefully that will result in new investments in various Eclipse projects.
Anyway, one of the examples of work environments shown was for a J2ME developer. The first thing that jumped into my head, and of course I'm writing this entry without thinking more so I may come off a bit misinformed here but hey I'm just the dumb C++ guy, but who cares about J2ME any more? With the rich mobile development environments provided with Android, the iPhone, the new Palm Pre, and even Qt for mobile devices, why would you do J2ME development any more. Isn't there much more opportunity for greater riches writing apps for these new and wildly popular environments?
Anyway, feel free to comment and tell me the way it is. And I'm sure the J2ME people over in DSDP are the right people to do that ;), since they know that community. But I am curious about whether the J2ME community is still on the rise, or whether there is a migration happening to these new technologies.
Wow Doug,
ReplyDeleteThat was quick! You actually ask a very good question.
As someone that spends his days dealing with JavaME every day at mFoundry, I have to tell you that we aren't likely to to see JavaME going away any time soon. Your examples of higher end "smart" phones are all good ones, but fails to account for the large number of "feature phones" that are being sold for little or nothing on carrier subsidies. In the end, it all depends on the target consumers.
In the end, we seem to currently be moving in the direction of more device fragmentation and not less. I do believe that we will see some consolidation in the space in the next couple of years (UIQ going away is an example).
Thanks, Craig, exactly the person I hoped would respond :).
ReplyDeleteI guess the biggest push for J2ME would be the sheer volume of "feature phones" out in the market. I'm one of the millions that has such a beast. I haven't joined the smart phone parade yet and am not in a hurry to have my life tied a tiny keyboard...
Another metric to consider besides volume of devices in market, is amount of data usage. Recent stats from AdMobs and MMetrics indicate that the total number of data requests made by users with the iPhone alone exceeds the TOTAL number of data requests made by users with feature phones. Taken further, one should as the question, "Even though there are more feature phones in market, are they really being used enough to warrant further support?"
ReplyDeleteThe main issue with J2ME is that there is no unique selling point like AppStore.
ReplyDeleteA developer has almost no chance to sell his little J2ME application.
Even sharing it for free is difficult as normal phone users don't know that they can install software on the phone or that the phone has an OS.
So the steps are:
1. A market lead needs to provide a shop
(e.g. the companies from the Kick-off of the Mobile Industry Working Group)
They are free to employ me to do the job (I'm a neutral Swiss).
2. All mobile phones can automatically query the shop with a *native* phone application (preinstalled and high performing - no web stuff where you wait all the time for response!)
3. The phone user only needs one point
for leaving his credit card information
and paying the fees
4. All developers can upload their application and the shop shares the profit with the developers. No micro-payment hassles for developers.
Developers should be handled as VIP
in any manner.
Free applications are handled for free
in the shop.
The shop is a free of charge Certificate Authority.
Believe me, the developers will be attracted like flies to the dung.
Without that, J2ME has almost no chance to gain market.
Marcel
Marcel, I'm not sure that's totally true. For example, my wireless provider, Rogers in Canada, has a store where you can buy J2ME apps. I think that's true with other carriers as well. The problem is how do you as a app provider get your good to that store. Is there a distributor/publisher who does that?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHa, "migrate" to where? There are 1B+ decent J2ME devices out there and that number climbs every week.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the previous poster. J2ME devices aren't going away.
Smart phones will probably make up less than 25% of global phone shipments in 2012.
Today's J2ME devices are way more powerful and robust than they used to be. Case in point, Nokia just introduced a Series40 J2ME phone with a 320x480 display. Amazing!
The real mark against J2ME is that the core implementation is rather featureless.
But that's exactly where a solution like we've created at Everypoint really shines. We can create "rich" network-enabled applications with interfaces that look great and run them on regular J2ME phones.
Check it out: Everypoint Live Demos
We have a session at EclipseCon where some Mobile Industry Working Group members, as well as general players in the mobile industry, will be talking about go to market opportunities for application developers in mobile. Stop by and check it out: http://www.eclipsecon.org/2009/sessions?id=582
ReplyDeleteLori, what was the outcome of the session?
ReplyDeleteDo we now get a free of charge certificate authority which is valid on all phones?
What about my other comments?
Thank you
Marcel
Marcel -
ReplyDeleteThe session I mentioned is being held on March 24th. It has not happened yet.
If you are not familiar with Java Verified (http://javaverified.com/), I suggest you check out your website. Most Java-enabled phones contain the Java Verified root certificate. Once you obtain a publisher id, you can then submit your applications to the program.
While many OEMs and carriers are investing in easier to use stores for the consumer, I do not believe the basics of signing for Java ME applications will change. Java Verified is the standard for the industry.
Lori,
ReplyDeletethis is exactly what I'm talking about:
http://javaverified.com is unusable
for normal developers:
What are the costs of this process?
What then, what with new versions?
How to sell, how to do micro-payment?
One customer needs to pay 20 software producers by entering the credit card info always again?
What if the developer only needs to sign the app, not knowing if he ever
can earn the 500$ back? What if it is
free software?
Why do I need a 'About' and 'Help' menu,
it is the design freedom of the developer how to place information...
This is simply useless!
I hope you have some pragmatic people
along at your conference otherwise
i doubt there is useful outcome.
Speaking of "useless". Why are you communicating with each other in my blog?
ReplyDelete