You thought wireless hype had gone away, didn't you? Nope, it's back with a vengeance--with 2.5G networks rolling out along major commuter corridors and 802.11b clouds descending on Starbucks. As the economy picks itself up and dusts itself off, rest assured that someone is going to ask you to kickstart a wireless initiative soon enough.
At Java One this week, every company seems to have a wireless tale to tell, with Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) as the punch line. As you may know, J2ME is not a single specification but a collection of specs designed to adapt to a full range of PDAs and cell phones (and set-top boxes for that matter). It has three great selling points: app portability among diverse devices, full support for apps that run offline, and much better security than plain WAP.
The flurry of mobile Java activity is dizzying. RIM announced a J2ME toolkit for its Blackberry 5810, the PDA phone launched this month that supports GPRS (the 2.5G scheme being implemented by Cingular, AT&T, and VoiceStream). Metrowerks, Nextel, and Sprint are all talking up their Java tools to build and/or deploy enterprise apps on mobile devices. Most interesting of all is a new spec proposed by Sun that will enable J2ME clients to consume Web services: Yesterday, Oracle endorsed the proposal (JSR 172) as it announced a J2ME add-in for its JDeveloper tool and a J2ME toolkit for its application server. For expert opinion, I contacted CTO Jeff Capone of wireless app server provider Aligo, who thinks JSR 172 is a great idea, but notes that you probably wouldn't use the limited horsepower of a J2ME cell phone to consume Web services.
Or much else, I might add. Next time you hear the hype that there are 14 million Java phones out there, remember how little that number means to enterprise developers. With cell phones, you're talking Java games. Only PDAs have the processing, memory, and display to run such apps as CRM, field-force automation, and other software that serves a serious enterprise purpose. So don't develop for lowest-common-denominator hardware or you'll never make the ROI. Plus, make sure your apps do something useful in offline mode, because reliable 2.5G connections are still a ways off. And by all means develop for a standard set of APIs like J2ME--as wireless devices and infrastructure strengthen, you should be able to move your carefully crafted apps to new and more powerful mobile devices pretty easily.
Are you dreading or longing for the next wireless wave? E-mail Eric or TalkBack below.
