Motorola's Java moves

Electronic News, Nov 2, 1998 by Jim DeTar

san jose -- Motorola will today introduce what it believes to be the industry's first virtual Java machine based on an embedded microprocessor platform -- the MCore.

Motorola's announcement late last week that it has completed definite agreements to become a shareholder in the Symbian joint venture was prelude to additional announcements related to the company's embedded market strategy, including introduction of an FPGA board that will enable Motorola MCore customers to do test and debug themselves, and the announcement of the company's embedded Java strategy.

"This is the first embedded processor company to announce we are running Embedded Java, a subset of Personal Java where you select a library," said Kyle Harper, Motorola's manager of wireless strategic business at MCore Technology Center.

"It represents a more streamlined version for embedded applications. What this enables you to do is take full Java applications and run them on a platform that uses Java. You have an underlying operating system like EPOC 32 that is Java- aware and you have a virtual machine on top of it running the Java applications.

"What this enables you to do is have digital PDAs or cellular phones; it allows an open standard through Java to port from one device to another. Because it is Java you have reduced the amount of code. Motorola selected some of the basic subsets to put in this Embedded Java platform. We will work with Symbian and other partners to define libraries," Mr. Harper noted.

Motorola will demonstrate its MCore Embedded Java technology on a Java platform running on an LCD screen at ESC West.

Late last week, Motorola announced it has joined the Symbian joint venture. Formerly Psion Software, London-based Symbian was launched three months ago as a joint venture among Psion, Ericsson and Nokia to promote the EPOC operating system for wireless information devices. The venture's charter is to enable the market for smart phones and communicators. Symbian is currently in the process of continued on page 20 continued from page 16 setting up offices in the U.S. and Japan.

On completion of this transaction, Motorola will join the supervisory board of Symbian. Psion's shareholding in Symbian will subsequently be reduced from 40 percent to 30.7 percent while Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia will each own a 23.1 percent stake in Symbian.

Motorola's Mr. Harper said that Motorola and Symbian had been in discussion for some time before concluding the agreement. When asked whether Motorola had made an equity investment in Symbian, Mr. Harper replied, "Yes we did. We will have a 23.1 percent equal share with Ericsson and Nokia." Mr. Harper declined, however, to provide additional financial details.

He said that when Psion decided to create the Symbian venture it wanted to talk specifically with three of the leading communications companies: Ericsson, Nokia and Motorola but it took awhile for negotiations across the Atlantic to be completed. "We were the last to close negotiations. There were a lot of different issues, legal and other hurdles in terms of partnership with a European company."

As part of the agreement, Symbian's EPOC operating system will offer further functionality for licensees with the inclusion of the TrueSync technology from Starfish. Enabling interoperability between Wireless Information Devices, TrueSync provides multi-point synchronization allowing users to enter information once anywhere, and synchronize with desktop and server-based applications and services. Motorola recently bought into Starfish and gained access to the TrueSynch technology.

Porting To MCore

Symbian will also work together with Motorola to provide support for EPOC to be ported to the MCore microprocessor RISC architecture. "The porting of MCore will be a joint venture of engineers at Motorola, and Nokia and Symbian. It is a whole programming environment that is an open environment. MCore is the architecture they decided to use to demonstrate that it is an open architecture for wireless," (applications), Mr. Harper said.

Symbian and its partners are working to facilitate key mobile standards, including Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Bluetooth and Java for Wireless Information Devices.

"Motorola provides Symbian with key experience and technology that will benefit all of our licensees," said Colly Myers, CEO of Symbian. "The addition of Starfish TrueSync technology further develops our technology platform and reinforces EPOC." The transaction is conditional upon the approval of the European Commission and certain customary conditions being met.