The Killer Java Application?
In What does No Java on the iPhone Mean? (and the follow up More on Java and the Mac) James Duncan Davidson looks at why Apple haven't added Java support to the iPhone. In particular he claims there's no killer application made with Java. In the strictest sense, that's probably true, but there is a killer category of applications which are almost exclusively made with Java - games for mobile phones.
It's this popularity of Java in the mobile phone world that makes the lack of Java on the iPhone seem so odd to me. I can understand Apple wanting to have complete control over the iPhone interface, and I'll concede that most of the existing games for mobile phones probably wouldn't translate very well to the keypadless iPhone, but it will be interesting to see if Apple can satisfy the great desire for cool little mobile games that today's teenagers, a key market segment for the iPhone, without leveraging the existing knowledge mobile games developers have in Java. If the iPhone takes off it won't be a problem, similar to how there are a huge range of iPod specific accessories, there will be - if and when Apple make it possible - a huge range of iPhone specific games and add-ons.
I'll be watching with a fair bit of interest to see how much this lack of games impacts the iPhone's adoption rate. Certainly the people who are looking at it now won't care too much - they're all Apple fans and miscellaneous geeks. When it goes to market and we start hearing the reviews from teenagers who care about such things.
The other part that may be interesting is what happens to the ring tone market as more and more phones use standard MP3s for the ring tone and make it easy to load them onto the phone. The iPhone should nail this and Nokia and Sony-Ericsson are pushing their MP3 player capabilities. Nokia's even going so far as to note how easy it is to get music onto the phone in their Australian marketing.
Interesting times ahead…
January 21st, 2007 at 4:11 pm
[...] Source: Adrian Sutton Filed under Blog by [...]
January 24th, 2007 at 3:28 am
i really think teenagers or ‘mobile game’ users are not the target for the iPhone, which has an iPod included, but many others business or productivity applications which can make it not so attractive for teenagers. just my thought.
After all, nobody can have the idea of buying a Mac for gaming isn’t it?
January 25th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
I think Eclipse is the Java Killer App — it’s got great ruby & rails support!
January 26th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Your post makes me wonder why are there no good J2ME GUI SDK to make something as good as ADOBE FLASH LITE ON MOBILE, most of J2ME midlets today are crap, pathetic UI and nowhere as near to FLASH LITE. Until I found this UK startup Tricastmedia, their product (TWUIK Rich Media Engine http://www.tricastmedia.com/v1/twuik.php) is what midlet developers need to create polished and professional looking UI…
http://mobiko.blogs.com/mutant/2006/09/tricastmedias_t.html
When I first saw it, I must say TWUIK has got to one of the most powerful J2ME GUI engine I have seen thus far. Just look at the demo they created above using TWUIK, using mashup for data and TWUIK to create the UI.
I think the announcement of iPHONE would make others take a more serious note at Phone UI design. With TWUIK, Java developers now has a choice to create something that rivals FLASH LITE on mobile.
http://mobiko.blogs.com/mutant/2007/01/the_iphone_phen.html#comments
January 27th, 2007 at 3:43 am
Great programmers by the numbers do not code in Java, why great programs mostly are not Java programs.
May 29th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Java is a huge bloated mess. I would never code with it.