Sony Ericsson has adopted a Java platform strategy for its mobile phones which the company believes is key to supporting content developers in creating applications for a multitude of phones. Sony Ericsson, one of six corporate partners behind Symbian,  points out that there are five Java Platform versions used for the company's  feature and mass-market phones, and two for its smartphones.

By making its Java Platform Strategy public to the developer community, the company aims to help developers concentrate on enhancing users' game-playing experience rather than spending all of their time on porting issues.

The Java-enabled handset and mobile games market is "booming," according to Sony Ericsson. "New games and Java enabled handsets are released across the globe on a daily basis...(and) there are 450 million Java-enabled handsets globally, representing potentially the biggest platform for electronic games in the world," the company says.

Sony Ericsson has outlined what it calls three "dilemmas" facing wireless developers: 

• 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.

"Even though many handsets support the same API set, interoperability is not guaranteed," the company points out. "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."

More details on this strategy,  with additional links, can be found at:

http://www.symbianone.com/content/view/1738/