According to Sanjay Jha, chief operating officer of Qualcomm’s chipset division QCT:
“Google wants fragmentation in the industry [and] is putting a lot of resources behind Linux”.
Well, yes, sure, adding new platforms results on a more fragmented mobile space; from the developer’s perspective, yet another platform to support. (BTW, Sanjay, this also happened when Qualcomm introduced BREW, years ago).
But Google has introduced Android simply because why pay for or comply to “licenses” when you don’t have to, in this case to Java ME technology owners, from Sun to other, and because it gives them control of what the Android platform is, and because they can dictate its evolution, roadmap, and distribution.
There are two real “threats” to Java ME: 1) mobile web, and 2) Android. Mobile web I put on a different category, and I’m not going to regurgitate the benefits of mobile web vs. native, but Android is a different story; it is a direct competitor to Java ME and MSA, it uses the Java programming language that so many are used to, and like (from the application perspective, who cares about bytecodes?). And it uses Linux below it as the OS.
So Android not only drives fragmentation, but also has the potential of grabbing a large chunk from the Local applications space, from Java ME, to BREW, MSFT, Nokia, Apple and so on.
But this is going to take a while… Maybe; see Android to invade Japan! (Andrea’s Mobile Porfolio blog).
ceo