Simon’s Blog

In the next few weeks, Sun Microsystems will launch JavaFX Mobile.  For handset makers and network operators, this represents a huge opportunity to transform the mobile software industry.  It’s an opportunity the industry should be jumping at – it might just be its savior. However, there’s a few things that will have to happen for the industry to derive maximum benefits from this new technology.

Take a look at the pie chart above.  It represents US market share for mobile game downloads for the three months ending Nov 2008 (the numbers were from a comScore survey).  The yellow segment represents iPhone game downloads; the red segment represents smart phone game downloads (excluding the iPhone);  and the blue segment represents feature phone game downloads.   The iPhone has about 14% market share, compared to 86% for the rest of the market.

Why is this a big opportunity for JavaFX Mobile?  Well, the point is this – that 86% of the market is for phones that can run Java.  However, those devices are fragmented in terms of their Java implementations; so making software that runs on all these phones is time-consuming and expensive.   If the mobile industry works together, and with Sun, though, JavaFX Mobile has the potential to unify that 86% of the market in terms of games (and other) software development.

So, the first thing the mobile industry needs to do is – make sure that JavaFX Mobile works the same on every device, and works on every new Java device you make.  Is that a challenge? Sure, but with a desire from all the major players to to make this happen, it’s quite possible.

There’s something else too.   Looking at the pie chart, it’s clear that the iPhone is only a small (but impressive, given it’s a single handset) part of the US mobile games market; but it grabbed that market share super quickly.  The fact that iPhone has grown market share so rapidly is stunning.   How did Apple do that?   Simple – Apple opened up iPhone to all developers, right down to single-person development shops; and put all their apps on a level playing field in the App Store.

This, then, is the next thing the mobile industry needs to do.  Open up phones so that any owner of any phone can download any piece of JavaFX Mobile software from a central market place to their phone. Are there challenges with doing that?  Sure.  Will revenue sharing among all the stake-holders need to be figured out?  Yes.  So go figure it out.  Now.  Don’t be greedy.  The benchmark for effectiveness of app deployment is Apple’s App Store.     This is not rocket science.   Apple showed you the way, so wake up and make it happen!

That’s not all though.  If the mobile industry does all this successfully, not only can they protect their market share, but they can actually make the pie bigger. While 32% of iPhone owners download games, only 3.8% of non-iPhone owners do.    So, the mobile industry could  make the pie up to eight times bigger than it is now, by working hard to make JavaFX Mobile a success.

What does all this mean for developers – one-person shops and large corporations alike?   Well, let’s take a recent success story of a single developer, Ethan Nicholas.  Ethan has been having a major success with his iPhone game, iShoot.   To date, over 250,000 iPhone owners have paid $3 for this app.  That translates to a gross revenue of over $500,000 ($0.5M) to Ethan after Apple has taken its share.   Pretty good going! Now, though, imagine that, instead of developing iShoot for iPhone, it had been possible to develop a single app in JavaFX Mobile that could be deployed to every Java mobile phone.   Based on the existing market size, Ethan might have made $3M from his app; but if the market size had been transformed by an effective app-store-like user experience, he might have made $24M – that’s twenty four million dollars.

There’s no doubt then -  the potential opportunity that JavaFX Mobile represents is massive.   However, to take advantage of it, the industry needs to sort out device fragmentation problems in terms of their Java / JavaFX Mobile implementations; and do an amazing job on the purchasing and deployment user experience; and of course Sun needs to deliver on their JavaFX roadmap.

I really hope the mobile industry grabs at this opportunity with both hands.   In a few weeks, when JavaFX Mobile is launched, we’ll see whether or not it’s looking like they’re moving in the right direction. People can’t afford to take too much time about this, though.  The “next-generation” mobile software train is leaving the station; and the truth is, right now, the only people on board are the ones working at Apple…