Sun Microsystems Inc. Tuesday announced agreements with several PC manufacturers to ship the Java runtime environment on their PCs. More than 50 percent of the current market of PC suppliers will be covered by the agreements.
Sun announced deals with Acer Inc., Gateway Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Toshiba America Inc. and Tsinghua Tongfang Co. Ltd., of China. These companies join the roster of PC and systems vendors that include Apple Computer Co., Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Lindows.com and Red Hat Inc. that are shipping the most current and compatible version of Java.
Rich Green, vice president of Sun developer tools and Java software, told eWEEK that he expects Sun to attain up to 90 percent of PC manufacturers, by measure of distribution, shipping the Java runtime environment within a year.
“Leading PC vendors are listening to their customers who want easy access to high-performing, industry-standard Java technology,” Green said, in a statement. “These agreements encompass some of the best-known brands in PC computing and point to the tremendous value of the Java platform as a must-have for the modern computing desktop.”
Sun announced the Dell and HP news at JavaOne in June.
“Were at about 50 percent of the worlds market share in terms of worldwide OEM volume. So were making good progress,” Green told eWEEK. “The list were working on is the top 20 worldwide OEMs. Virtually all the ones we have signed are in the top 20 or top 12 OEMs. And were pretty impressed by the interest we have received worldwide from OEMs who want to license and distribute the latest versions of Java. We expect that these numbers will continue to grow to a very significant percent of total world market share over the next six months or so.”
Green said Suns announcement at JavaOne was only a first step. “The acceleration has been unabated in terms of garnering more ISVs and more volume for Java on the desktop,” he said.
This progress puts Sun in an interesting position regarding its lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. over Java. Specifically, it raises issues with the “must-carry” Java provision Sun is seeking against Microsoft, which would force Microsoft to ship the latest version of the JRE with every copy of Windows the software giant ships.
If Sun should garner support for Java on up to 90 percent of the PC shipped, the “must-carry” clause could become moot.