Sony Ericsson combines Java and Flash

by Nancy Gohring

April 30, 2008 —

Sony Ericsson
is hoping to promote "wow" mobile-phone applications by enabling developers
to combine the best of Java and Flash in the same applications.

On Wednesday, Sony Ericsson plans to announce new technology that lets developers
combine Adobe's Flash Lite and Java ME into a single Java application. The combination
of the two technologies allows developers to get past shortcomings in each technology,
said Ulf Wretling, director of Sony
Ericsson Developer World.

Java has many APIs (application programming interfaces) that let developers
access phone functions like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and secure payments, while Flash
lacks some of those hooks, he said. Flash, however, offers some nice user-interface
capabilities compared to Java. Using both, developers can build a game, for
example, that uses Flash for the menu and Java for other features. "They
can mix and match," said Wretling. "A Java application can utilize
graphics and UI components both from Java and from Flash."

Sony Ericsson plans to release in the second half of this year a set of APIs
in its software development kit that will let developers take advantage of the
capability. The resulting applications will be treated like typical Java applications
within Sony Ericsson's developer platform, and also across the industry by operators
that may already have a well-defined system for supporting Java applications.

"For operators and service providers it means they don't have to add anything
else into their management infrastructure," said Christopher David, director
of long-term platform planning at Sony Ericsson.

Sony Ericsson expects to begin supporting the platform in its phones in the
second half of the year with the intention of ultimately supporting it on virtually
all of its phones. It will demonstrate the technology next week at the JavaOne
conference in San Francisco.

Ultimately, Sony Ericsson would like to share the technology with the broader
community so that it could be used on other phone platforms. "We intend
to make the APIs available, to publish them, but in what way, form and shape
we haven't fully decided yet," said David. "But you can anticipate
standards or open source or a combination thereof."

With a growing number of mobile operating systems and development platforms
on the market, Sony Ericsson, like the other phone makers, will be competing
for developer attention. All of the software and phone makers want to attract
the best developers, who in turn want to be able to create attractive applications
that can be used by a large user base.

"There is definitely competition about getting developers' mind share,"
said Wretling. However, if companies like Sony Ericsson can make the development
environment attractive, they can help grow the number of mobile-application
developers too, he said. Ultimately that benefits users, who will be able to
choose from an increasing number of applications.

IDG News Service