Japan's third-largest mobile operator J-Phone has launched Java-enabled handsets for its J-Sky mobile Internet service subscribers, five months after NTT DoCoMo, the country's dominant mobile carrier, introduced Java-enabled mobile phones for iMode users.
The Java 2 Micro Edition platform is a programming language created by Sun Microsystems that greatly improves interactivity of applications downloaded to the mobile phone.
Software written in Java makes it possible to deliver more varied content to mobile phones. Users can download and run applications on Java-enabled wireless handsets. These applications will work even when users are disconnected from the mobile network.
J-Phone's Java handsets were developed jointly with Britain's Vodafone and manufactured by Sharp.
New Java-based content to be offered on J-Sky is expected to include games, financial tools and personal information management systems such as scheduling functions.
J-Phone will release a suite of tools to content developers this year to stimulate development of Java-based applications for J-Sky. The mobile operator has 6.7 million J-Sky subscribers compared to NTT DoCoMo's 25 million iMode subscribers.