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SavaJe, a spinoff of Lucent Technologies, threw its hat—or, rather, cellphone—into the ring at the 2006 JavaOne Conference in San Francisco this week, with the unveiling of a “sophisticated” handset that runs a unique, Java-centric operating system.
The Jasper S20 mobile phone, made by Group Sense Limited PDA (GSPDA) and running SavaJes Java-based SavaJe Mobile Platform, also garnered JavaOnes “Device of the Show” honors.
Why create a Java-based phone OS, when the mid- and high-tier mobile phone market appears to be locked in a three-way battle among Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Linux?
The answer might best be summed up as, “Its the apps, stupid!”
According to recent reports, over 700 million mobile phones are now equipped with Java application execution environments (aka Java Virtual Machines, or JVMs), making Java the most widely used software platform for mobile phone applications.
Additionally, the New York Times recently quoted Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz as saying, “More teenagers recognize Java than they do Microsoft, because that is what they have in their pocket on their cellphone.”