http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/12/sun_apple_snapple/

I do think, had Sun and Apple merged eight or ten years ago, they could potentially have given MS a run for its money - with Apple’s desktop, and Sun’s server-side expertise.

Apple has changed the game now. Since 2001, they’ve made themselves a successful consumer electronics company. Their future business looks to be all about - home computers, phones, music and TV etc.

Sun is pursuing its “the network is the computer” vision. They want to be the company that powers business that see server-side computing as a competitive advantage and that need large amounts of computing power. That’s why they want Java to be on billions of devices - because it will drive demands for on-line services that need lot of server-side resources.

Not sure Apple would see a need, right now, to acquire Sun in order to accelerate their business growth. However, should Sun develop something amazing and unique in the area of Internet-based, on-demand computing in the future, that could change… because it could enable entirely new classes of consumer devices to be created. Sun has assets that could let them do this… and I know they’re working on something in this area. I have no idea if it’s going to be game-changing or not, though.

Sun is a pretty interesting company though. They have some amazing software assets: Java; Solaris; xVM; MySQL amongst others. All Open Source. They also have the ability to develop high-quality software. The Java VM really *is* rocket science - that’s why it’s taken so long to get good enough for consumer use. Plus they have some of the best server hardware in the industry.

If they execute well, they could be worth $60B in five years… They’ll need some luck though. Their business model is a long-term bet that being Open Source will drive big market share, and big value in the long-term.

JavaME on Blu-ray deals with all the interactive aspects of Blu-ray - stuff like networking, picture-in-picture, synchronising video, and of course the graphical menus. Blu-ray disc authors are going to be able to do amazing things with Blu-ray compared to what could be done with DVD. The Blu-ray Java platform is branded as BD-J or Blu-ray Java. It’s Java ME plus a set of APIs designed for doing stuff with Blu-ray discs and video. I’ve heard that some JavaFX stuff will added to Blu-ray in the future - which is interesting, because it means Sun is thinking about JavaFX in the context of something other than Java SE.

They don’t seem to be making that much profit, sure they’re estimating revenue in the region of $15 Billion from mysql, but that’s still a huge gamble at the moment.

If there are no takers for JavaFX, and no hardware partnerships are announced at JavaOne, then it would seem that Sun Microsystems is in a very precarious position, is it strong enough to make it through the US recession?

http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2007/10/11/report-apple-gains-29-share-of-notebooks/

Lot of confusion with actual numbers obviously, people confusing market growth and market share, and also divisions of individual markets, also fact that Apple doesn’t sell an ultra low price bare bones laptop, but US consumer + education was 45.8 % in 1H07, probably more now as education sales have been very strong since Leopard release.

Obviously Apple not doing as well in enterprise sales but that should increase now with Leopard features for SMB and enterprise.

There is room here for a very low priced Mac laptop equivalent to price point for a Mac Mini.

It says, “Java largely failed on the Desktop”.

Not exactly true. Java is arguably the world’s most popular desktop application language, and arguably the most powerful platform for developing advanced desktop user interfaces. It’s true that there aren’t many consumer desktop applications written in Java; but it has succeeded big-time in the Enterprise.

On consumer side, times are changing. The platform has developed. It may be that the time is now right for Java on the consumer desktop, including in web-based applets. We’ll see. Like I said above, I think a lot of people are going to be surprised by the new consumer-focussed Java - there’s a lot of people with opinions on Java that know next to nothing about the platform.

The article also says, “Java ME is a joke… few users bother to install software”.

Well, no doubt, there are big problems with Java ME - not least: a decline in sales; platform fragmentation; and low-quality buggy implementations on different devices. Notwithstanding that, millions of people download Java ME apps every month. It’s still a multi-billion dollar market. That’s hardly “a joke”. It’s also a long way short of reaching its potential. The questions are whether Java on mobile devices can return to rapid growth; and whether JavaFX Mobile can play a role in that.

Let’s compare to the iPhone platform for a second. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for the market for third-party iPhone apps to reach the multi-billion dollar level. Or for the most popular third-party iPhone apps to be consistently downloaded millions of times per month - month after month - as the most popular Java ME apps are.

Aside from mobile, the Java ME platform is going to be in every Blu-ray player, with Java ME software on every Blu-ray movie sold. That is going to be a significant industry too.

Where did you get your market share figures for Macbooks? I haven’t seen those anywhere… I find the 50% of new laptop sales being Macbooks hard to believe.

Would the world be so worse off if Java did roll over and die?

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/03/14/iphone-20-sdk-java-on-the-iphone/#more-1635

I still think Apple should just buy Sun, dump Solaris, and take over the server business, it would kinda be fair in the grand scheme of things and help save a lot of Java developers out there just pure wasting time. If they only released that Apple is actually their ‘daddy’ and they would be nothing if it wasn’t for NeXT.

I think Java 6 might be delayed indefinitely, so they may as well get a Mac and start writing Cocoa…

I don’t expect the rest of the mobile industry to roll over and die now that Apple is in the market. What has happened is that Apple has now woken up more than a few complacent execs in the mobile industry. It will probably take these companies around three years from the iPhone launch to start competing properly (that’s how long it usually takes big companies to make big changes in what they’re doing).

There’s no rocket science here. It’s about figuring out what’s important in the “post iPhone world”, and dedicating the necessary resources to go make it happen.

So, Apple probably has another couple of years to turn their technology lead into a position of strong market share. Ten million iPhones (and presumably more than ten million iPod touches) will be a great start for year one; but in years two and three, they’ll *really* want to be ramping up sales fast.

In another couple of years the mobile companies that are going to survive will have to have transformed the quality of their R&D to match Apple’s fabulous, innovative R&D