Sun Microsystems has plans. Big plans.
After being acquired by Oracle last month for $7.4 billion, Sun will launch a Java application storefront at its JavaOne conference in San Francisco next month.
Although there isn’t much information known about what the Java store will feature or offer, candidate applications “will be submitted via the web, evaluated by Sun for safety and content and presented under free or premium terms to the broad Java audience.”
Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz said the store “promises to build a more formal business around Java’s distribution reach. It’s a network service to connect companies of all sizes and types to the roughly one billion Java users all over the world.”
As with other app stores, Sun will charge for distribution – but unlike other app stores, whose audiences are tiny, measured in the millions or tens of millions, ours will have what we estimate to be approximately a billion users. That’s clearly a lot of traffic, and will position the Java App Store as having just about the world’s largest audience.
