Sun says new DoCoMo phones use Java

SAN FRANCISCO: Japan's NTT DoCoMo Internet-enabled mobile phone service has
launched support for richer graphics, games and e-commerce based on Sun
Microsystems Inc.'s Java programming language, the companies said on Tuesday.

DoCoMo's Internet-enabled i-mode phones have drummed up more than 18 million
subscribers in less than two years, but the service has been mostly text based.

With the new technological tie-up, tiny Java applications, or applets, are
downloadable by a new generation of cell phones from various manufacturers that
use the "i appli" service, launched on Friday, Sun said.

Armed with the applets, the phones themselves can do much of the computing
work necessary for moving graphics, games and the like, rather than relying on
far-away network computers.

A Java phone could be told how to make an image move rather than waiting for
the network computer to send every frame, for instance.

That improved efficiency will work hand in hand with high-bandwidth third
generation, or 3G, wireless networks, expected to be tested in Japan mid-year,
Curtis Sasaki, Director of Java Evangelism at Sun told Reuters.

"It is a perfect road map to get consumers used to the fact of having
all these new kinds of capabilities as the 2.5 and 3G networks hit the
market," he said.

Java, a programming language that works on various operating systems, is
already used extensively on the Internet, and Sun has a special set of design
tools for environments like cell phones, with limited memory, bandwidth and
screen size.

Sun envisions Java as a write-once-run-anywhere programming language.

As part of a legal settlement announced last week, Microsoft Corp. agreed it
would not use future versions of Java and said it would concentrate on
developing it own initiative called .Net.

(C) Reuters Limited 2001.