Apple has publicly said that it has no plans to support Java or Flash on the iPhone. But that is not stopping Sun, “We’ve expressed our intent to do this and our desire, really, to work with Apple to build a JVM (Java Virtual Machine) for the iPhone and we’re sort of moving forward with that” said Eric Klein, vice president of Java marketing. Sun is also working with Innaworks to develop alcheMo for iPhone, it can be used to port Java ME mobile games to iPhone and iPod touch. The alcheMo has optimizing translator that converts Java ME application source code to equivalent source code for iPhone. So why is Sun so hell-bent on bringing JVM to iPhone even though its not getting much support from Apple. The simple reason is even though there are many smartphones that can surf web, but none have been as successful as the iPhone in bringing mobile Internet to the forefront. Today in US more the 60% of mobile Internet usage is through iPhone even though it has around 5% to 7% of overall mobile phone market and 28% of smartphone market. I think the reason why Apple is not supporting Java and Flash on the iPhone is that these applications are very resource hungry and would decrease iPhone’s battery life and overall performance.

[Via Digital Arts]