Nick Jones

I’m in Finland meeting clients and as you might expect the subject of mobile platforms and how to develop applications for them is a popular topic of conversation. But what’s also interesting is one of the topics that isn’t being mentioned – Java ME. Interest in ME seems to be declining amongst serious developers and I’m getting a feeling that it’s starting to become sidelined and less relevant.

Smartphones are part of the problem. By 2013 in mature markets like Western Europe the vast majority of handsets sold will be smartphones. And each of the smartphone platforms has some preferred development technologies such as Qt or C++ for Symbian, Objective C for Apple and so on. Microsoft doesn’t encourage JME on Win Mobile, and while Android is a Java platform it’s more of an SE than an ME universe, and certainly isn’t vanilla ME. So, apart from RIM, the leading smartphone platforms all have development options that are more sophisticated and attractive than JME for complex applications.

This has always been the case, but now the devices are getting more sophisticated, the types of applications are changing, and the viability of competing tools – especially Qt on Symbian – is growing. Developers trying to stand out in the competitive world of appstores will need to develop sophisticated applications. Innovative contextual systems, for example, could well need clever features that JME doesn’t provide. And if you’re a developer wanting to create simple applications there are easier options such as Flash and widgets. In a few years the mobile web and AJAX will likely support offline operation, local databases, threading, and access to handset APIs and become a much more capable platform. So in the smartphone space ME looks under threat from above and below.

Also, we have the worries about the long term direction of ME and other mobile Java technologies like JavaFX following Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun. It’s still too early to tell what sort of Java custodian Oracle will become, but the uncertainty doesn’t help developers making strategic decisions.

I’m not predicting that JME will vanish from handsets, it won’t. But it looks as if interest in development tools such as Qt and the mobile web will continue growing at the expense of JME. And if you’re a client and you want to see our predictions for just how important smartphones will become by 2013, give us a call.