Boom times ahead for Java phones
06-05-2004
by Ciaran Buckley

The Java-based applications and services installed on mobile phones will earn carriers more than USD15.5 billion by 2008, mainly from games and messaging services.

A new report from mobile analysts ARC Group estimates that the Java market earned operators almost USD1.4 billion in 2003, which equates to around 3 percent of data revenues. By 2008 and it is expected to account for 12.4 percent of data revenues.

If revenues for person-to-person messaging are removed from the figures, Java applications have 10.7 percent of the 2003 data market, which increases to 27.4 percent by 2008. Apart from messaging, entertainment and gaming form the bulk of the mobile Java market.

But Malik Saadi, senior analyst and researcher at the ARC Group, warned that the Java technology needs to be developed so that it will become popular for applications other than gaming. "The lack of support for applications other than games could limit the use of Java in the future," Saadi said in a statement.

The report said that Java's openness, which is one of its key technological advantages, is under threat since development is being tailored to the commercial interests of the leading players in the Java industry.

The report also found that although an increasing number of phones on the market contain Java applications, there is a wide variation in the number of people who use those applications. In Japan and Korea it is estimated that 80 percent of people who have Java-enabled mobile phones use the Java applications, whereas only 10 percent of Europeans use the Java applications on their handsets.

Handsets equipped with Java rose threefold in 2003, reaching sales of 95.5 million in 2003, compared to only 32 million in 2002. The South Korean market is dominated by Java-enabled CDMA phones and in Japan over 50 percent of handsets in circulation are already Java-enabled.