Sun Microsystems Inc is buying information appliance software hotshot Diba Inc on undisclosed terms, with the intention of boosting the consumer electronics market for appliances running Java. Pursuing commercial Java appliance business via its JavaStations, Sun’s keen to accelerate the adoption of Java in the super-charged and super-volume consumer space. Interestingly, Sun’s given Diba to its Microelectronics chip business, where some say Java should have rested in the first place if Sun was going to do this appliance thing right. Diba was formed only last year by Oracle Corp refugees Farid and Farzad Dibachi (CI No 2,902) with the idea of creating a hardware reference design, writing the operating environment and tools for a variety of information appliances, and then licensing them for other people to make. Diba will become a new Consumer Technologies Group business unit within Sun Microelectronics, and the two founders will report to Microelectronics president, Chet Silvestri. The group will offer technologies to firms building consumer products such as internet-enabled televisions, set-top boxes and smart telephones – combining Java software, and Java processors with the Diba software. It will service Diba’s existing licensees, including Mitsubishi, Cirrus Logic, Motorola and NEC – all Java licensees too – though Sun admits there won’t be a strictly level playing field and that companies building Java chip-based appliances to Diba’s design will be treated more equally than the rest. Some are viewing the acquisition as Sun’s answer to Microsoft’s acquisition of WebTV Networks Inc (CI No 3,135), although Diba insists the wheels for this deal were in motion long before anyone knew of Redmond’s plans. Diba also says it didn’t shop itself around and had been focused on Sun all along. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed, but Sun says that, given the relative sizes of the two companies, the acquisition will be essentially non-dilutive. Sun says it will reveal more details about product plans and strategies at the Java Internet Business Expo in New York at the end of August by which time it will have figured out which pieces of its existing technology and strategy Diba makes redundant. The deal leaves the future of Sun’s interactive television set-top venture with Thomson Multimedia SA, Thomson-Sun Interactive LLC, unclear. The Java for TV work Sun was doing with WebTV seems to have evaporated since Redmond took the set-top company out. Ironically, Sun has been here before, with its short-lived First Person handheld communicating computer unit back in 1993, from which the Green and Oak projects were eventually re-cast as Java.
