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 Last week we looked at Project Professional, an application which used
the Sony Ericsson P910i's Java support for project management. Sony
Ericsson have a comprehensive Java strategy, from their Symbian OS
powered phones down. This paper from Sony Ericsson explains the
strategy.
Sony Ericsson has adopted a Java platform strategy for its
mobile phones which we believe is key to supporting content developers
in their struggle to create applications for a multitude of phones.
Currently, there are five Java Platform versions used for Sony Ericsson
feature and mass-market phones, and two for Sony Ericsson smartphones.
By making Sony Ericsson's Java Platform Strategy public to the
developer community, our aim is to help developers concentrate on
enhancing the game-playing experience for the end-user instead of
spending all of their time on porting issues. When new Java Platform
versions are introduced in the future, we plan on making these public
also.
Background - Opportunities & Challenges for Java Content Market
Article by 
The Java??„? technology enabled handset and mobile games market is
booming. New games and Java enabled handsets are released across the
globe on a daily basis (there will be a total of about 2 billion mobile
phone users in the world within the next year or so, of which,
according to Ovum, there are today 450 million Java-enabled handsets
globally), representing potentially the biggest platform for electronic
games in the world The anticipated growth in mobile Java applications
is tremendous, the latter driven by the increased availability of J2ME
MIDP 2.0 and JSR-184 enabled phones.
For Java content developers this represents a great market
opportunity: to establish new brands and titles, and to make money. But
however great these market opportunities seem, mobile game developers
are faced with one major challenge: how to get their games to work on
hundreds of devices for many different mobile operators and languages
worldwide.
The challenge consists not only in that the phones are based on
different JSR's, but also that different handset manufacturers have
implemented the same JSR's differently, in some cases even doing unique
implementations for each new device. Most developers start by
programming their game for one or two key phones on the market, based
on either volume considerations or key technology features supported,
or a combination of both. But then each game must be ported to and
quality assured on a broad range of phones to maximize market value.
Developers in general have to either spend a lot of time on porting
issues in order to publish their applications for as many handsets on
the market as possible, or settle for a sub-set of the phones.
To summarize, content developers may find themselves in one of the following dilemma:
- They end up spending a major part of their work learning
the specifics of each phone and J2ME platform implementation, and then
doing porting work. Less time is available for development of new games
and applications which are needed to secure future income and growth.
- They
must consider the least common denominator working feature-set across
phones in order to have truly portable content. Since the quality of
implementation and the number of features of J2ME enabled phones differ
a lot, it prevents innovation and effective use of new features.
- They are forced to focus on a sub-set of phones available on the market in order to optimize the outcome of their work.
Porting work facilitated through platform strategy
Even though many handsets support the same API set, interoperability
is not guaranteed. The detailed behavioral semantics of a J2ME enabled
phone normally differ between each handset. It can be anything from
screen size, execution speed, memory management, 2D and 3D graphics
sub-systems, networking system, Bluetooth sub-system, etc, and even
implementation issues - the list can be made long. The reason is that
the major part of the behavior is defined by the mobile hardware and
software platform in which the Java environment resides. And in many
cases this represents a device unique platform.
Sony Ericsson actively works to minimize the differences in behavior
between its J2ME enabled phones by having a platform strategy and an
evolutionary approach to its Java implementations. This effectively
means that we minimize the number of platforms for developers to work
with. The idea is to maximize interoperability and minimize differences
between Sony Ericsson phones supporting J2ME, with the objective of
minimizing the effort and learning required to program for different
Sony Ericsson phones once you have programmed for one of them.
Some by-now rather old porting help how to adapt your MIDlets from
Nokia Series 40 to Sony Ericsson phones, and a recent paper on how to
port games and other applications from BREW to J2ME and to Sony
Ericsson phones can be found here>>
Sony Ericsson Java Platforms
Sony Ericsson has two main J2ME platform paths for its phones; one
for its Symbian OS based smartphones and another one for its feature
and mass-market phones, i.e. the non-Symbian OS based phones. Both of
these J2ME platform paths are implemented through an evolutionary
approach in order to maximize backwards and forwards compatibility
between platform versions. Normally each platform version is used in
several phone models, e.g. the K300, K500, K700 and S700 series share
the same J2ME platform version. This means that both quality assurance
and end-user experience is shared between these phones to a very large
extent. It also means that porting applications is made much easier for
content developers.
A list of Sony Ericsson J2ME platform versions and which phones that
are based on them can be found below. This will help content developers
plan, program and target their Java applications to the greatest number
of phones possible.
Sony Ericsson has made some Java features in its Java Platforms
optional, i.e. configurable. These optional features are added when it
makes sense to do so, for example, the Bluetooth API's (JSR-82) are
only enabled for a specific phone based on a specific Java Platform
version when the phone actually supports Bluetooth radio communication.
For a complete technical description, refer to the Java Developers' Guidelines.
Harmonization of screen sizes
Another challenging porting issue for content developers is usually
the varying screen sizes on the market.
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