JavaFX Mobile Developer Program Coming At JavaOne?
In the first week of May, many in the Java community will meet at JavaOne in San Francisco. It’s the biggest Java conference of the year. At last year’s JavaOne, Sun announced the new JavaFX brand, aimed at generating a renewed interest among developers for creating consumer applications by using Java. One big announcement was JavaFX Mobile, which promised to bring full desktop Java to mobile phones. It was always going to be the case that, if Sun could execute on their plans, then this would be massive deal.
Much has happened in this last year, and the work going behind the scenes on the new consumer-ready Java platform is progressing. Expect some announcements at JavaOne about this. However, much has also happened in the mobile space in this last year: Apple has announced a developer program for iPhone and given developers early access to an SDK and iPhone emulator; Google has announced Andriod, and a corresponding developer program with access to an SDK and Android phone emulator. Based on that, I think we should expect Sun to announce a JavaFX Mobile developer program at JavaOne this year, including a JavaFX Mobile phone emulator.
The big questions in my mind are: will the JavaFX Mobile platform be as slick as the iPhone (which is a clear leader in terms of compelling user experience)? Will there be a touch/gesture API to enable compelling touch screen devices to be made? And, most importantly of all, will JavaFX Mobile be sufficiently compelling to persuade handset makers to sign up to produce phones based on JavaFX Mobile?
Asam Bashir wrote:
Sun executives are fast becoming a bit of a laughing stock when it comes to any of their consumer orientated ideas, which basically is because they’ve never made any consumer devices. If they’re serious about development for JavaFX they really need to be working with one of the major phone hardware developers. Apple ‘get it’ because it makes the whole widget, hardware and software development are integrated, for others it’s not. Apple knows where it is taking consumer hardware and plans ahead, it isn’t just dependent on one technology, touchscreens, it’s thinking far ahead. Ultimately for this reason I think Android is pretty doomed, check out Andy Rubin demoing Android on a prototype,
http://gizmodo.com/361872/andy-rubin-shows-off-quake-google-maps-street-view-on-android
Apart from the buttons it’s a pure iPhone rip off, I’m sure the swipe gestures are patented anyway. Where are the features that will set it apart from the iPhone? Where are the novel hardware ideas and leads for the future? Apple hasn’t stopped with just touchscreen and motion sensors, it’s thinking well ahead, others are just copying. That’s why I think ultimately both Android and JavaFX are doomed…
Posted 21 Mar 2008 at 3:24 am ¶
simon wrote:
Sun execs a laughing stock? Which ones? Taking a high-level view, Sun has been rather successful at getting Java into consumer devices: 80% of mobile phones; Blu-ray players etc. You can argue about the extent to which Sun, as a company, has benefitted from this. But Java itself is an amazing success story.
The plans for desktop and browser-based consumer Java are coming along quite well. It’s not perfect, but I think a lot of people are going to be pretty surprised with what’s coming down the wire soon.
Now, as for JavaFX Mobile, clearly Sun needs a hardware partner (or several) to make this a success. I’m sure they’d love to be able to announce a big hardware partner at JavaOne that’s going to make a really cool JavaFX Mobile phone. Whether they’ve been able to do that, I don’t know.
Apple has really raised the bar for mobile devices. The iPhone OS is way ahead of anything else in the market - I don’t see *anyone* that’s competing effectively at the moment. All the responses to iPhone that I’ve seen from the big players won’t be scaring Apple too much.
In theory JavaFX Mobile has the *potential* to be a true competitor for the iPhone platform. Bringing full desktop Java to mobile phones is amazingly powerful idea. Whether it’s technically possible to do it well, I don’t know. That is, I don’t know if phone hardware is poweful enough for this to work well. Android, in my opinion, hasn’t delivered (yet) - in all the demos I’ve seen, it looks really horribly amateurish and ugly. It has a powerful architecture, but it doesn’t yet look a winner to me. JavaFX Mobile may end up being the same as Android (or worse). Until we see where Sun has got to with JavaFX Mobile at JavaOne, we won’t know. But, technically, the potential is there for it to be great.
For sure, though, this is now Apple’s battle to lose. The hardware looks great. The OS looks great. If they fail, it will be because of their business model and their attitude to their customers. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming to understand that their *customers* wanted an SDK for the phone… and that their *customers* wanted good corporate e-mail support… And it’s still not clear they get it - as soon as people digested the SDK, their *customers* have started to complain that the SDK won’t allow them to write the kind of apps they want to write.
Time will tell on all this. As I say, Apple has a big technical lead with iPhone. Techincal leads never last, though. Never. Their great technical achievements have bought them some time, that’s all. Apple have a chance to dominate the mobile phone industry. But they’re far from perfect in their strategy, so their competitors have some real chances to outwit them.
Posted 21 Mar 2008 at 2:31 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
As Apple has shown, business models are not static and can change overnight, they have listened to both their customers and investors and responded in an appropriate manner with development of it’s SDK. The original priority for Apple was to produce a smart-phone with legendary Mac ease of use, which it did, very successfully, so successfully in fact that the rest of the market saw it’s applications *beyond* Apple’s own original criteria for a high-end consumer device. The SDK now allows Apple to develop the idea further for *new* markets in both enterprise application and gaming. Apple wasn’t trying to design the perfect gaming machine, but it just so happens that the iPhone/iTouch is a perfect gaming machine, and with an installed base of 150 million iPod users, it has found itself in a position to take on Nintindo DS and PSP.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/03/20/iphone-20-sdk-video-games-to-rival-nintendo-ds-sony-psp/
Sure, technical leads never last, but Apple doesn’t stop developing new ideas and by the time the rest of the industry has caught up on touch interfaces, Apple will move on with the next industry changing idea. Java will never compete because it just doesn’t know where the industry will move next, it has to wait for a consensus to develop before it can develop, that’s why Java will always be several steps behind and will never be able to outwit Apple…
Posted 21 Mar 2008 at 5:35 pm ¶
simon wrote:
We’ll see. Watching the phone wars is a bit like watching oil tankers change direction - it takes a long time to play out.
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
Posted 21 Mar 2008 at 6:33 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
“Ten years after its cloning of the Mac, the role of Microsoft in partnering with and then copying the technology Jobs was developing would fall to Sun Microsystems. Sun and NeXT joined efforts in 1993 to bring the NeXT development environment to Sun Solaris. After porting the system and developing the OpenStep specification to allow any vendor to host NeXT apps on its own operating system in 1994, Sun backed out to turn its attention toward a different project in 1996: Java.”
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…
Posted 22 Mar 2008 at 1:43 am ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
Then maybe Apple can bundle a Cocoa API with WebKit and licence it to Simbian and Android, it’s half way there already. With Mac OS X market share increasing year-on-year, more then 50 % of new laptops and 15 % desktops are now Mac. Surge in demand for new Mac OS X software has never been so greater, it needs developers working in Cocoa to sustain this growth.
Posted 22 Mar 2008 at 2:52 am ¶
simon wrote:
That Roughly Drafted article contains a fair-amount of poorly informed opinion…
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.
Posted 22 Mar 2008 at 2:26 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/03/19/apple_us_retail_sales_feb/
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.
Posted 22 Mar 2008 at 7:20 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
What would be a fair price for Sun Microsystems at the moment? $20 Billion?
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?
Posted 22 Mar 2008 at 7:35 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
PS just curious, what is JavaME doing in Blu -Ray, for the GUI bit of menu?
Posted 22 Mar 2008 at 7:40 pm ¶
simon wrote:
You could probably buy Sun for $15B. Clearly Apple could swallow Sun. They probably wouldn’t want to though - Sun doesn’t have a particularly profitable or fast-growing business currently. Apple has a truly fabulous business at the moment. The way they’ve transformed themselves from a personal computer business into a successful consumer electronics company since 2001 is simply *amazing*. Steve Jobs really *is* the world’s greatest entrepreneur.
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.
Posted 22 Mar 2008 at 8:24 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
Of course Sun is a very interesting company, but lets just think about it for a bit, a combined Sun and Apple would compliment each other, Apple knows human-interface and consumers, Sun knows enterprise - combined it could really give MS a run for it’s money…
Posted 22 Mar 2008 at 8:35 pm ¶
simon wrote:
Sun and Apple have almost merged three times. One time, Sun was going to acquire Apple. The next two were mergers. If they merged now, Apple would obvously be the acquirer.
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.
Posted 23 Mar 2008 at 1:12 pm ¶