
Oracle's Ellison considers netbook market foray - mshafrir
http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNews/idUKTRE5516AE20090602
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seregine
Oof. From the article:

 _"I don't see why some of those devices shouldn't come from Sun," said
Ellison, who runs the world's third-largest software maker. "There will be
computers that are fundamentally based on Java."_

My first reaction: the Java environment will attract more enterprise devs than
consumer devs. These netbooks won't be popular with consumers.

My second reaction: enterprise netbooks? Sounds like a lot of money to be
made, and the margins could be lifted by support contracts, bundling with
expensive software, etc. Oracle netbooks as remote consoles for DBAs, for
example.

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access_denied
And once all those corporate dudes have those JBooks around all the time, you
have a market for consumer apps. Like when PC gaming established itself.

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tybris
Nice to finally see a visionary in charge of Sun.

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GiraffeNecktie
Visionary? That's a nice way of putting it. I'm wondering what the hell's he
smoking to give him this vision of Sun flogging the lowest of low end, low
margin commodity PCs. How are they going to make any money and what good will
it do for the positioning of the Sun brand?

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axod
Well for a start, they could really champion Java on them. If they won with
that, that would be a fantastic move - and it makes quite a bit of sense.

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GiraffeNecktie
Makes sense in what way? I don't see any special synergy between Java and
netbooks, certainly nothing that needs championing by Sun. If you need Java on
your netbook - and most people don't - it's there already.

~~~
axod
It makes sense in terms of having a stable platform to deploy apps to. Java
has worked pretty well on mobile phones.

Imagine a netbook which just runs a java O/S. Maybe it has a java app store
with all the apps you could ever want, and a kick ass browser.

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patrickg-zill
Actually a netbook package with just enough smarts to connect to Wifi, plus
VPN + Sun Ray software, would be great at expanding their Sun Ray installed
base. Sun Ray users who use them at home say everything is zippy even over
256kbps connections.

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noss
Do either Sun or Oracle have the design know-how to pull this off?

I get the feeling they're making products that are as sexy as a boxy volvo.
Reliable but... boring.

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olefoo
Not at all. The Sun netbooks will be beige, with purple corners!

And they will run on Java
[http://electronicdesign.com/Articles/ArticleID/4841/4841.htm...](http://electronicdesign.com/Articles/ArticleID/4841/4841.html)

