Concentric Sky, Inc.

JavaOne is happening this week. One of the primary highlights is the Java Store - recently announced on Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz’s blog. The Java Store is the largest developer-to-consumer software distribution channel to date and shows great potential. It is a powerful entry into the market and could be a game changer in both the desktop and mobile spaces.

Adobe clearly dominates the Internet-enabled desktop market with Flash. However, because of its use on smartphones, Blu-ray DVD players and other devices, the Java VM is actually installed much more widely. Sun has long realized this advantage and has sought new ways to monetize the ubiquity of Java. The success of these efforts has been mixed.

Sun’s new strategy seeks to leverage JavaFX, a re-envisioning of the Applet. Applets, you may recall, fell into disuse because of a dispute between Microsoft and Sun which led to Microsoft releasing a competing - some would say crippled - virtual machine of their own. This was very confusing for end users and was one of the primary factors in the early growth of Flash on the desktop.

JavaFX is an attempt to regain that ground - and it brings a lot to the table, notably with respect to building Rich Internet Applications. For instance, JavaFX apps can seamlessly move into and out of the browser environment - crossing a boundary normally closed to Flash. In our opinion, Sun’s key to success on the desktop will be making the most of these advantages - and paying close attention to the experiences of Android and iPhone developers in the mobile space.

Java, via Symbian OS, is well established in the mobile space - far more even than Apple’s iPhone OS. Yet, there are recent reports that the iPhone OS is actually overtaking Symbian OS on the web. With both iPhone and Android developers expressing various frustrations, an app store that delivers on Sun’s “Write once, run anywhere” philosophy might actually be able to turn things around.

Sun has a vibrant development community of its own and is well positioned to please developers looking for a way to innovate freely. The sheer breadth of potential customers will be a major draw - and there’s certainly no shortage of Java developers in the world. If Sun can provide a clear app submission process and simple payment mechanisms, the JavaStore may quickly overtake its competitors.

Here, the story takes a local turn. Our friends at Sun approached us a few weeks ago and asked Concentric Sky to prepare an application to be showcased when the JavaStore debuted this week. This was of course very hush hush. As one of just a handful of companies invited to participate, we were flattered and immediately set to work.

Due to the relative newness of JavaFX, we actually got to spend some time working closely with Sun engineers to troubleshoot the JavaFX platform. This was a lot of fun and really quite rewarding - almost more fun than writing the app itself. We look forward to working with some of the exciting new features coming out in version 1.2.

Our app is really quite simple. It’s a port of our iPhone app Astronomy Picture of the Day. We added some functionality that’s been on the APOD roadmap for a while - the ability to translate the photo descriptions into 6 languages on-the-fly. To do this, we’re leveraging Google’s handy Translation API. Look for this functionality coming soon to the iPhone version of the app.

Our experience with the app submission process was actually quite pleasant. The process was a bit new for everyone, but the requirements were clearly outlined and we actually got to speak directly with real people. There’s a lot still to be worked out, but Sun seems genuinely open to developer input. That makes us very optimistic.

Here’s a picture of our app on display today in the Sun booth at JavaOne:

The photo choice is quite appropriate.

As more information comes out about the JavaStore developer experience, we’ll be posting here - so stay tuned.

We’ll be following the rest of the conference with great interest, keeping an eye out for new directions and emerging trends. If we run across any interesting tidbits, we’ll Tweet them.