Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news
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All entries are written by Anders Borg, CEO and Consultant of Abiro, that has a long experience in strategic planning, developing embedded and Java software, usability aspects, and the mobile phone industry in general. You can also read the latest Mobile News entries on your phone via wap.abiro.com, and we provide many News Feeds from popular news services. For advertising and contribution queries, please use the feedback form. News feed (local) |
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Friday, May 25, 2007
OSGi to the rescue for mobile developers?
Is OSGi the Solution for Mobile Java? hints that JSR 232 Mobile Operational Management could fix some of the issues with Java ME (or rather specifically CLDC/MIDP). OSGi is a Java-based framework for dynamic loading of classes, when needed and when updated.
The article provides a list of issues that I don't think JSR 232 will solve in itself, except the third one...
Nokia is supposedly a pioneer in this field. I like how Nokia seems to be early on with new technology that matters. They were early with GPS and early with functionality for transferring mobile content (Smart Messaging). They might not be first with 3G and such base technologies, but based on sales figures, consumers are more concerned with useful and "tactile" features than necessarily the highest performance.
The article provides a list of issues that I don't think JSR 232 will solve in itself, except the third one...
- Fragmentation of the Java ME platform
- The absence of mobile runtime environments that adequately leverage the capabilities of advanced "smartphone" devices
- The difficulty of managing mobile applications and configurations once the device has left the building
- The architectural chasm that separates common Java web development skills and APIs from the specialized rich client practices employed when developing for mobile devices.
...and I add some more (equally non-solved by OSGi, mostly):
- Not trivial to re-use the massive amount of desktop-adapted Java code. There's not much code examples and complete open source projects for MIDlet developers.
- Lack of a graphically/multimedia focused UI (compare with Flash Lite).
- Lack of a widget-like RAD-like programming environment (a la "make an app in a snap" (TM)).
Nokia is supposedly a pioneer in this field. I like how Nokia seems to be early on with new technology that matters. They were early with GPS and early with functionality for transferring mobile content (Smart Messaging). They might not be first with 3G and such base technologies, but based on sales figures, consumers are more concerned with useful and "tactile" features than necessarily the highest performance.

