Sun Microsystems’ Java cellphone software, called ‘mobile information device profile’ (MIDP), was designed to enable developers to write a single program for any handset. Yet five years later, when the platform is used by half of the world’s 1.4 billion handset users to download other solutions, MIDP can not run on any handset, reports CNET. Phonemakers such as Motorola and Nokia had to include their own MIDP fixes in devices, thereby ending the ‘write once, run anywhere’ ideal of MIDP, according to Sun executives and mobile phone software developers. Developers embracing this market will face fragmentation as their biggest roadblock, according to Tira Wireless CTO Allen Lau, writing in Java World.
