According to James Gosling, often called the father of Java, the Java Micro Edition (ME) will gradually be supplanted by the Java Standard Edition (SE). He said, “We’re trying to converge everything to the Java SE specification. Cell phones and TV set-top boxes are growing up.”
The idea is that mobile devices are packing an increasing amount of processing power, enough to handle all the demands of full-featured Java.
Sun’s Java expectation dovetails with recent trends, most notably Apple’s iPhone, which architecturally is much more an Apple computer writ small than a mobile phone writ large. In particular, Apple uses a version of its regular Safari Web browser so users will have as much of the desktop Internet experience as possible.
To be clear, the move to Java SE won’t happen overnight. Smart phones using various pared-down versions of Java are expected to stay in the market for at least a decade, but the shift is already under way.
Do you develop for mobile devices? Will you be switching over to Java Standard Edition anytime soon?
