SANTA CRUZ, CA, September 13, 2004 - The number of developers currently using the J2ME platform for wireless development has risen to a new high, according to the Fall 2004 Wireless Development Survey by Evans Data Corporation. Forty percent currently use the standard with another 24% evaluating J2ME for future use. The primary consideration in choosing a target platform to develop for is the application runtime environment, selected by 27% of survey respondents followed by the physical device, OS and popularity of the device.

In other findings, 30% of developers constructing phones felt improvements to software applications and the resulting increase in efficiency could most reduce development costs, 17% felt that optimizing the platform and operating system were the best means for reducing construction costs.

"J2ME's growth can be directly attributed to wide-spread adoption of J2ME-capable devices in the consumer marketplace, increasing the demand for custom software. As this market grows, it follows naturally that more developers will create applications targeting this growing audience," said Jason Kaczor, Evans' wireless analyst. "Another reason for J2ME's surge - it's more cost effective to develop J2ME-compliant code once, than to customize or re-write code for differing devices and operating systems."

Other findings from the August 2004 survey of more than 450 wireless developers:

• Developers' plans for user-initiated applications on the Java platform that allow end users to download, install and execute new applications, are already well underway with forty percent currently building them and another 19% planning them for the next year.
• The three most likely security mechanisms for wireless applications are: Public key infrastructure with 15%, SSL/TLS connections with 12% and User authentication/password protection with 11%.
• Testing and debugging tools are the second most important tool in the wireless developers’ arsenal with 76% saying they are "extremely important" or "very important". But they are the second most unsatisfactory type of tool with almost a quarter indicating that they need work.

Evans Data Corporation provides regularly updated IT industry market intelligence based on in-depth surveys of the global developer population. Evans' syndicated research includes surveys focused on developers in a wide variety of subjects.

Copyright 2004 Evans Data Corporation. All other company names, products and services mentioned in this document are the trademarks and property of their respective owners.

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