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iPhone to run Java mobile games in 2008?

That's what Sun's technical evangelist reckons

iPhone to run Java mobile games in 2008?
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As you should be aware (because we keep moaning about it), Apple's iPhone doesn't have any official downloadable games yet, although Apple is reportedly working on it.

And due to the iPhone being a closed platform, mobile developers can't port across their existing games, unless they make web versions playable through iPhone's Safari browser.

However, here's exciting news: next year, you could be playing regular Java mobile games on your iPhone. At least, that's what Terrence Barr says. He's the technical evangelist for the Java mobile and embedded community at Sun, the company behind Java.

Why? It's because Apple is releasing a software development kit for the iPhone, allowing developers to create applications for it. Barr says this could result in the open-source phoneME platform being converted to run on the iPhone, which in turn (do correct us if we're wrong, techy readers) would enable Java mobile games to be ported to run on the handset.

"It is quite likely that people will start porting phoneME to the iPhone to provide Java that way. I expect that to happen as a community effort," is Barr's exact quote, reported by B4U Tech. Apple hasn't commented yet, however.

On a related note, Pocket Gamer's iPhone arrives today, and we'll be using it to explore the world of iPhone gaming in the coming weeks and months. So if you know of any decent iPhone games – web or downloadable – do pop us a line!

Stuart Dredge
Stuart Dredge
Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)