TABLE OF CONTENTS Wireless applications, from simple applications to complicated 3G games, need a platform to run on a software system that interprets the application instructions and tells the device how to execute them.
For application developers, the more standardized that platform can be the better, because it means they can address a larger market with lower development costs. However, a number of rival platforms and standards have made life difficult for mobile application developers; they have had to pick up new skills and development techniques quickly in order to cater for the range of environments and of handsets they work on.
The current market leader is a flavour of Sun Microsystems' Java programming language, Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition or J2ME. Almost every handset maker supports J2ME, including Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola. Other development environments of note are Symbian, BREW and Flash Lite.
J2ME started with one version of Java, which is now known as Java 2 Standard Edition ( J2SE), and that had the tagline Write Once, Run Anywhere . The idea behind Java was to create a language that would enable developers to write their own code once, which would then run on any platform that supported a Java Virtual Machine. Java was launched in 1995; it originally only worked on desktop machines, but has since extended its reach much further. Java 2 Enterprise Edition ( J2EE) has been launched to provide support for enterprise-wide applications, and the most recent edition ofthe language is...
