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Middleware for Mobility
Nokia CTO highlights advances in peer-to-peer mobile technologies.
by Lee Sherman
JavaOne, June 30, 2004
Nokia Chief Technology Officer Pertti Korhonen demonstrated continued commitment to Java and developer productivity in his JavaOne keynote Wednesday morning. Korhonen addressed the market opportunity for Java developers, which he called "a serious business," stating that there are more than 100 global operators committed to Java, 250 million active Java-enabled handsets on the market today, and a handset adoption rate growing at approximately 50 percent a year.
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Nokia CTO Pertti Korhonen announces partnership with Sun for multiplayer gaming.
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Korhonen said that Java and Symbian clients are already overtaking personal digital assistants in volume and market penetration. The business of mobile downloads, ringtones, games, and other applications was worth more than $3 billion in 2003. "It's all about the volumes, of course," said Korhonen, "but it's also about providing the right capabilities for each segment."
With both customers and developers in mind, Nokia has a series of Java-enabled platforms, each addressing a single segment. Series 40 focuses on consumer devices selling in high volumes and runs Java MIDP applets such as games. Series 60 is for smartphones aimed at business and prosumer users. Series 80 is for communicator devices aimed at enterprise users and runs Java MIDP as well as J2ME Personal Profile. Series 90 is for multimedia devices that offer streaming audio and video along with communications functions. Developers can access a rich set of both native Symbian and Java APIs through a common set of developer tools and support programs.
In his presentation, Korhonen highlighted advances in end-to-end mobile platform Java architecture intended to simplify the development, delivery, and manageability of Java applications. Korhonen offered a technology demonstration of next-generation Java technology from Nokia that will go beyond the ability to download applets and allow components, shared libraries, and drivers to be downloaded directly into the client device at run time.
For example, a help desk can use this capability to do remote troubleshooting, while an IT manager can provision applications or even provide additional application functionality across a mobile workforce. The capability is made possible by the work Nokia is doing with the JCP and OSGI on JSR 232 (Mobile Operational Management), to enable manageability of MIDP apps. It will also be possible to run multiple apps simultaneously in the same VM, and the new specification supports the notion of background and foreground apps. Nokia is adding a middleware layer on the client to support authenticated Web services based on open specifications from W3C and the Liberty Alliance so that developers can concentrate on their application's user interface instead of worrying about the back-end infrastructure.
Korhonen announced that Nokia will be working with Sun Microsystems to drive the development of the middleware required for multiplayer gaming. He said Nokia's SNAP Mobile community and multiplayer game technology will be integrated into Sun's J2ME Wireless Toolkit by early 2005.
Nokia also announced that it has updated a broad array of tools and software development kits (SDKs) to support the Eclipse open source Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Support is included in the Nokia Developer's Suite for J2ME, version 2.2, and the Nokia Mobile Server Services SDK. In addition, any MIDP Nokia platform SDK can now be used within the Eclipse IDE. All of Nokia's tools can also now be used to develop applications for CDMA devices.
About the Author
Lee Sherman is a contributing writer to Java Pro.
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