Snap Sun decision launches Java at iPhone

'Heck. We're doing it'

By Cade Metz in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Mobile, 8th March 2008 00:18 GMT

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Less than a day after Apple unveiled its much-discussed iPhone SDK, Sun Microsystems has told the world it will build a Java Virtual Machine for Steve Job's handheld status symbol.

"We're very excited," Eric Klein, Sun's vice president of Java marketing, told the The Reg. "We've spent the last 24 hours furiously looking through what information was made publicly available, and we feel comfortable enough at this point on the information we have to commit the engineering resources to bring the JVM over to the iPhone and the iTouch as fast as our schedules and Apple's release schedule will allow."

That means the Jesus Phone JVM will arrive sometime after June, when the official iPhone App Store opens its virtual doors. You see, Steve Jobs has allowed third-party applications onto his phone, but each and every one must be funneled through his own private software market.

That said, Apple has allowed developers to set their own prices. And this made Sun happy. "We of course chose to set the price of the JVM at... free!" Klein told us with a chuckle. Or two. Or more. "Apple explicitly said developers can chose to put free applications through the App Store and - heck - we're doing it!"

Klein had no other details to share. Because there aren't any. "We're just 24 hours into this," he said. "We have a lot of learning to do, as do all the developers who just got access to the SDK. We just thought it was really important that our development community has the opportunity to write a Java app and have it run on the iPhone."®

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