Java on the iPhone? Sun Says Yes

Steve Jobarooni may not be all that interested in getting Java to work on the touchtastic iPhone, but Sun Microsystems is confident that they’ll be bringing a version of the Java Machine over to the iPhone soon, thanks to the wide release of the SDK.

Yes, they’ll have to fork over the $99 annual fee to be able to publish their Java Virtual Machine, but they’re willing to give it out for free to iPhone enthusiasts across the nation. The iPhone-compatible version of the JVM will be based on Java Micro Edition (ME), according to Sun’s VP of Java marketing Eric Klein.

By getting the iPhone to support Java, Sun is opening the door not only for fun Java-based games, but also for enterprise applications — like ERP or CRM — on the iPhone. Naturally, the iPhone-happy Java machine should work on the iPod touch as well. In the future, they may also port the more sophisticated Java Standard Edition (SE) and JavaFX technologies to the iPhone.