PortalPlayer — the company that makes iPods for Apple — has “plans to acquire a small private wireless-technology firm and has already said it is dedicating 2006 to building wireless capabilities”. I’m not sure whether “wireless” refers to mobile phone type wireless or WiFi type wireless. I’m not even sure it matters. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that Apple will be releasing a wireless-enabled iPod or iPhone soon it does give it that capability.
A more important note is that PortalPlayer recently licenced two key Java ME technologies from Sun, including the Connected Limited Device Configuration HotSpot Implementation 1.1, and an optimized implementation of the Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) 2.0. This will allow the personal media players to run Java games and other applications written as MIDlets. Adding further weight to the wireless rumor, the release also mentions that “In next generation devices, the downloading of Java-based content is expected to be conducted either wirelessly through a mobile service provider or a local area network”.
“With today’s announcement, Mobile Java content is now moving beyond wireless handsets into devices such as portable media players,” said Alan Brenner, Sun’s vice president, Client Systems Group.
This means that a lot of content developed for mobile phones will be able to be easily ported to iPods — or at least generic media players developed by PortalPlayer (apparently 90% of their business is iPods). Mobile game manufacturers will still have to go through the Apple orifice, changing the game play to suit the different style of the iPod and selling the content through the iTunes portal, but a lot will think it is worth the effort.
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