Archive notice: This article was originally published on March 10, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
This should bring at least one important software platform of the multimedia web to the iPhone as well. The outlook for Adobe’s Flash, by contrast, remains unclear for now following an exchange of words between Apple and Adobe last week.
Sun analysed the information published by Apple for the beta launch of the iPhone SDK and decided to bring the JVM to the iPhone and iTouch as quickly as possible, Klein said. Sun expects this to make a large number of Java applications work on Apple’s phone. Initially, it will be a JVM based on Java Micro Edition. Later, however, more extensive Java versions up to and including JavaFX could be implemented for the iPhone, according to Klein. As on all other platforms, the JVM on Apple’s phone is to be free for users.
Harsh words were exchanged over Adobe’s Flash last week. At a shareholders’ meeting on Tuesday, Steve Jobs was quoted in US media criticising its speed and is said to have described the mobile version, Flash Lite, as unsuitable for the web. In response, Ryan Stewart, Adobe Rich Internet Application specialist, said in a blog post that the web experience on the iPhone was incomplete without a Flash version. He pointed to a current total of 450 million Flash-capable devices and partnerships with companies such as Nokia and Sony. “We work with 18 of the top 20 mobile phone manufacturers,” Adobe spokesman Alexander Hopstein stresses in an interview with pressetext. Whether Flash would subsequently reach the iPhone was not up to Adobe alone. The company does not currently want to make any concrete statements about possible iPhone Flash plans.
Since Apple intends to allow software distribution for the iPhone only through its own iPhone App Store, Java will reach the iPhone no earlier than the store’s launch. Under Apple’s current timetable, this is to take place at the same time as the general release of iPhone 2.0 software, scheduled for June. Until then, there is still some time for a rapprochement between Apple and Adobe.
