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Mar. 26, 2009

If the rumor that IBM will soon acquire Sun Microsystems becomes reality, Big Blue would be able to secure a dominant entry into the crowded wireless device operating system market.

And it would also accomplish that feat very rapidly as well.

Although the IT giant has fared better than some of its competitors, it has still taken a hit from the global economic recession.

A Sun Microsystems acquisition would also allow IBM to integrate Java with its own mobile applications, particularly its Lotus Sametime platform, opening up the possibility of a unified communications platform for mobile devices.

IBM has experienced some issues in getting its Instant Messaging (IM) out to a large enterprise population because it doesn’t have control over an operating system, and this move could enable IBM in creating a better and more stable commercialized platform for unified mobile communications.

Ashvin Vellody, senior v.p. of enabling technologies at the Yankee Group said “overall, IBM has had a rather spotty track record on the mobile device application side. This acquisition could change that, and could create some productive applications for enterprises and then consumers alike.”

“Lotus and its 'Sametime' IM app could be rolled out on the mobile base, giving IBM nice entries into the enterprise markets. It gives Microsoft and Symbian, a Nokia-led alliance, strong competition on the OS side. The other competition is for wide enterprise apps, the RIM/Microsoft angle with software applications on devices.”

A potential deal with IBM could help Java-based Real Time Operating Systems in feature phones remain relevant as more and more cell phones become based on high-level operating systems like Symbian and Google's Android.

A Java-based operating system would eliminate the need for an abstraction layer between the RTOS and Java-based applications, ultimately improving application performance and making it more attractive to mobile developers. Feature phones would grow in importance, outfitted with a unified communications platform.

“With Java ME, with that type of a product it could incite IBM to productize it, commercialize it and include it in every phone that’s Java-enabled,” says Ken Burden, practice director for mobile devices at ABI Research.

He added “this could be that foot hold in the mobile device space that IBM has been waiting for. That’s one of the more intriguing parts of this, they could actually build an operating system around Java.”

If IBM were to release a Java-based OS, it wouldn’t be the first, but it would be more likely to succeed. Sava-Je released such an OS before it went defunct three years ago, a failure attributed to its lack of backing from a big OEM necessary to get the system off its feet.

SavaJe’s intellectual property rights were acquired by Sun Microsystems two years ago.

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Source: IBM.