OpenLaszlo makes a deal with Java to go mobile

I'm getting more information on the deal later today, but according to the press release, Sun and Laszlo are going to be working together on a project code-named Orbit. A demo of an Orbit application, running on Java ME, should be available later this year. OpenLaszlo has taken the approach of supporting multiple runtimes including Flash and DHTML, and with this, they've instantly made themselves a force in the mobile space. The press release cites that there are 3.8 billion Java devices in the world and 1.2 billion of those are phones. That compares to only 77 million Flash Lite enabled devices (according to Adobe, which means that this instantly makes OpenLaszlo a formidable solution in the mobile world.

I don't talk a lot about OpenLaszlo, partly because they seem to be focusing on Ajax and partly because there isn't a lot of news that comes out of the OpenLaszlo world. That said, they should always be in the Rich Internet Application discussion, especially with their Legals project. One of the complaints I've heard a lot is that Flash isn't open source. OpenLaszlo provides a great open source solution for Rich Internet Application developers and their deployment model is very unique. The OpenLaszlo platform allows you to write code that will compile into a Flash Player 7 SWF or a DHTML application. For Linux users who want to build Rich Internet Applications, OpenLaszlo is really your only choice until Adobe releases Flash Player 9. Now that they have a partnership with Sun to enter the mobile space, they should be getting a lot more attention from both me and the RIA community at large. I'll post more on the deal as I find out.