J2ME & Flash Lite - An Analysis by Asif Ali

J2ME
J2ME or Java Micro Edition (also known as JavaME) can be said to be phenomenally successful. It has been shipped across major manufacturers’ devices. It has enjoyed popularity for almost 3 years now, in existence for around 5 years.

But J2ME doesn’t exactly reflect the vision of the Java Platform in the true sense .As someone said, Write once, compile once, run anywhere is anything but a bad joke in J2ME. And for those who tried writing J2ME applications, tool support, productivity and user interfaces that get generated isn’t exactly even close to exciting. The API is loaded with head-aches that require mobile software companies months, thousands of dollars in licensing and specialized methodology/training to overcome these obstacles.

The Release of Flash Lite
Adobe recently released Flash Lite 2.0 a follow up to Flash Lite1.1. Flash Lite1.1 was good but had limited features, where as Flash Lite 2.0 seems to be playing catch-up with J2ME, but still got a long way to go.
Though Flash Lite cannot be compared to J2ME at the moment, I wouldn't be wrong to say that it is potential competition to J2ME, making things worse for SUN with BREW already looming large with domination in the US - one of the most potential markets for wireless in future.

Advantage Flash Lite
What I forsee is that one of the biggest advantages will be the fact that Flash Lite being proprietary technology is a subject of frequent reviews, upgrades and will consequently add more features to it in comparison to J2ME, whose’ development has slowed down and the features aren’t exactly moving in pace with the industry. With Sun at helm, many within the industry feel that J2ME & Sun are loosing or lack leadership and will soon loose its dominant position in the mobile solutions market.
And lets not forget how flash (on pc) has grown over the years. The PC based Flash player, has massive uptake with presence on 98% + of all computer (rich) browsers connected to the Internet, across major Operating systems.
No client side tool for internet applications has that kind of dominating presence, not even IE.

Flash Lite looks interesting but does Adobe really have what it takes(to be #1)? ?
Taking that trend down to mobile phones isn’t exactly going to be easy. These are the challenges
- Matching features/APIs with J2ME (this may increase the memory footprint of the player)
- Larger device compatibility - is still the biggest issue.
- Lack of great click and drag RAD based GUI environment for designing good applications (anyone tried Flex yet??) - This should also be available for Flash Lite which can accelerate application development and increase acceptance in developer community.
- Lack of a strong developer base - like Java or .NET

If Adobe can address these issues, it will can see an upward trend in the adoption of Flash Lite and this might just overshadow J2ME., But well lets hope the guys at Sun wake up before its too late., but anyways, I'd rather let the best tech win, eventually reducing headaches for the developers.