Nokia Looks to Java for Mobile Development

Developers of applications for wireless devices have a powerful new tool at their disposal. Delivering on its promise to introduce Java-enabled mobile phones, Nokia has teamed up with Boland to establish a framework for wireless application development and announced the results of their efforts at the JavaOneSM Developer Conference today. JBuilder Mobile Set, Nokia edition, is a Java2 Micro Edition (J2ME) compliant technology that fully integrates into Borland's popular JBuilder 5 development environment. According to today's announcement, "JBuilder 5 and JBuilder MobileSet, Nokia Edition include visual design tools for creating mobile applications, device emulation and debugging."

With JBuilder5 and JBuilder Mobile set, Nokia and Borland seek to hasten the development of the wireless platform. Mark Driver of Gartner's Internet and e-business technologies states, "Mobile and wireless devices are quickly being embraced and leveraged within mainstream e-business efforts." Java has had trouble gaining acceptance in a desktop PC environment due to current speed limitations, as applications are run through a virtual machine. But the language may prove to be more beneficial to the wireless platform, taking advantage of Java's code reuse and small display capabilities.

Aiding in the mobile push, Sun today announced an upcoming xHTML microbrowser with support for WAP 2.0. The microbrowser includes "an xHTML Basic module to display content on mobile devices, a User Interface module to provide access to URLs and bookmarks history, a WML Script module, and WAP 1.3 protocol stack to allow backwards compatibility with first-generation WAP gateways." This will be especially useful for companies looking to quickly deploy J2ME applications.

Applications written with JBuilder are scheduled to ship with several million Nokia handsets in 2002. The Boland and Nokia Partnership has ensured an expanded presence for Java on mobile devices. These tools will be freely available to more than 400,000 of Nokia's mobile developers, as well as other leading manufacturers, creating for a standard development environment.

Developers can learn more at Forum Nokia, along with downloading JBuilder tools via borland.com.

Sun's xHTML microbrowser will ship later this month, inlcuding full source code and samples.