AT&T drops Java on mobile phones, Sun updates JavaFX to no avail

Just as Sun announced the latest rev of JavaFX, AT&T announced that they would drop Java-based phones, favoring Symbian.

Tom Krazit reported earlier today on the news, quoting Roger Smith, director of next-generation services at AT&T who said "Java has not been a success," Smith said. "It's not because Java is bad, but we didn't manage it effectively."

The basic premise of the argument against Java is that it became fragmented with every manufacturer using its own version and defeating much of the purpose of Java as a platform to begin with.

And as mobile phones have started to become more and more like mobile computers, the software on those phones needs to become more and more sophisticated to run intriguing applications, Smith said. Java doesn't reach down far enough into the lower levels of the phone to exploit hardware in the manner that full-fledged operating systems do, he said.

I find it a bit curious that Smith felt that Java wasn't capable of exploiting the full hardware functionality. That sounds like more of a development issue then it does a functional requirement. Arguably the operating system should be abstracted to the point where Java can do what developers need it to.

As Stephen Shankland wrote about JavaFX today:
JavaFX also comes with a slick feature, the ability to move running applications out of the browser and onto the desktop--and back, if desired. Essentially, they can change their nature and abilities according to where they're housed. And the same application also can run on JavaFX Mobile, holding the promise for programmers that they won't have to endlessly rewrite the same applications for different media.

JavaFX looks to be very powerful as witnessed in the video below by Redmonk analyst Michael Cote. But the question is one of relevance. It's not clear that developers are terribly interested in JavaFX to begin with and the dream of monetizing mobile phones is clearly out the window with the largest wireless carrier.

[AppleSuxLeo]

Symbian is by far the best mobile OS.It is the most common worldwide for many good reasons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian_OS

[AppleSuxLeo]

There is a strong emphasis on conserving resources, using Symbian-specific programming idioms such as descriptors and a cleanup stack. There are similar techniques for conserving disk space (though the disks on Symbian devices are usually flash memory). Furthermore, all Symbian OS programming is event-based, and the CPU is switched off when applications are not directly dealing with an event. This is achieved through a programming idiom called active objects. Similarly the OS approach to threads vs. processes is driven by reducing overheads.
Symbian OS EKA2 supports sufficiently-fast real-time response such that it is possible to build a single-core phone around it?that is, a phone in which a single processor core executes both the user applications and the signalling stack. This is a feature which is not available in Linux. This has allowed SymbianOS EKA2 phones to become smaller, cheaper and more power efficient

[Pili777]

"dream of monetizing mobile phones is clearly out the window with the largest wireless carriers"
ATT is the 10th largest operator worldwide. The Top 9 routinely use Java. It's not that Java does not have issues, but most of these (fragmentation) come from its success the only crossplatform/OS app environment out there.