The companies will officially announce Java Technology for the Wireless Industry (JTWI), which consists of a refined J2ME specification, reference implementations and technology compatibility kit (TCK).

JTWI is based on JSR 185, revealed by ComputerWire in December, which also includes a product-availability roadmap. Commercially available products from vendors conforming to JSR 185 are due in the second and third quarters of 2003.

Furthermore, additions to the J2ME platform for cell phones will be added throughout the year up to September as more JSRs – the precursor to a completed Java API – are ratified by the JCP.

JSR 185 has been developed to simplify development of applications used across different handset manufactures’ devices. J2ME is a broad-ranging platform that contains a number of APIs so the platform can be used on a number of small-footprint devices such as set-top-boxes, PDAs and pagers in addition to cell phones.

Furthermore, cell phone manufactures themselves can choose which APIs to use to enable features such as multimedia or floating point support.

Nicolas Lorain, Java technology senior product manager in Sun’s consumer and mobile systems group, said the drive is to let developers focus on just the Java stack for mobile platforms, instead of figuring out which different APIs they must support.

This initiative is going to make it easier for application developers to build for mobile devices, he said.

Java has enjoyed phenomenal success on cell phones, attracting support from numerous handset manufactures and carriers and resulting in 50 million Java-technology based handsets worldwide according to Sun. However, Microsoft is edging into the market with its Smartphone operating system while many Java programmers remain simply confused at the complexity of the Java platform.

While Lorain denied the Java platform was vulnerable, he said the companies are being proactive in ensuring growth of J2ME in the wireless space.

As such, J2ME for cell phones will consist of three mandatory JSRs – Connected, Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) 1.0, Wireless Messaging API (WMA) and Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) 2.0. Cell phones with multimedia or floating point enabled by manufactures must use conditionally requested JSRs – Mobile Media API (MMAPI) and CLDC 1.1, respectively.

JSRs for Bluetooth, events, location services, web services, IM and security among others are under consideration for future versions of J2ME under the roadmap.

A JCP JTWI expert group has been created to establish goals and oversee collaboration. Expert group members include Motorola Inc, Nokia Corp, NTT DoCoMo, Orange PCS, Siemens, Sprint, Sun and Vodafone.

Source: Computerwire