3Com to Use Java on Palm Devices

SAN FRANCISCO — Sun Microsystems plans to announce today an agreement with 3Com to allow programs written in Sun’s Java language to be used on 3Com’s Palm, the best-selling line of hand-held computers.

The deal, expected to be announced at Sun’s annual conference for Java programmers in San Francisco, is a big part of the computer company’s bid to rebuild momentum for Java in a hot area of technology even as rivals develop their own versions of the language.

Competing versions of Java are threatening its appeal as a standard that works well on all operating systems, the underlying software that enables computers to perform specific tasks.

“3Com is committing to incorporate the Java platform in the next release of its Palm operating system,” said Sun Java Software President Alan Baratz. “A lot of functionality will sit on it.”

The alliance makes sense because the Palm’s chief hardware rivals use Microsoft’s Windows CE operating system, while Sun’s Java effort is also threatened most by the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant.

The alliance, the terms of which were undisclosed, will allow developers to use Java to create new Palm applications or extend applications from corporate networks to the portable machines.

“We expect a very strong focus on enterprise [big business] applications, such as sales-force automation, inventory management and customer response,” said Mark Bercow, 3Com’s vice president of strategic alliances.

Java-enabled Palms should start shipping this fall, Sun said.

Java has suffered in the past year as Palo Alto-based Sun and Microsoft struggled in federal court over Microsoft’s right to modify the Java programming environment to make the language function best on Windows machines.

While Sun has been winning in court, outside developers who write the programs have been less committed to the effort as they wait to see who prevails.

“Ever since the lawsuit, the enthusiasm for Java has dropped off sharply,” said Rob Enderle, an analyst at Giga Information Group. “You get the sense that Java has peaked, or may be peaking.”

Java, which was invented at Sun four years ago, remains far less popular than C++ and some other programming languages.

Sun recently acquired two small companies that had cloned versions of Java, Baratz said. But another such company, Transvirtual Technologies of Berkeley, said Monday it had used Microsoft tools to make a clone that works best on Windows, just as Microsoft itself was trying to do.

Transvirtual Chief Executive Tim Wilkinson said that while his six-employee company did contract work for Microsoft, the software titan is not an investor in his firm and has no ongoing relationship with it.

Wilkinson will demonstrate Transvirtual’s latest version of Java--for Palm rivals running Windows CE--at the JavaOne conference this week.