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You may have seen some of the coverage from the Java drinks & snacks event we did last week. Please remain comfortably seated & do not panic.

It seems that some of the discussions around convergence & what will happen in the future caused people to think Sun is (insert your favorite descriptor here - bidding adieu, killing off, abandoning, waving goodbye) Java ME.

Not happening! Java ME and Java SE are not mutually exclusive - they are complementary platforms - as James Gosling posts on his blog.

Laurie Tolson & Jean Elliott also chatted with Internetnews.com to provide some additional commentary on this topic.

Java ME is the core technology on billions (that's billions) of mobile phones. These are the feature phones that most of us use today & that the majority of people will continue to use for years & years (& years) to come.

Yes, Moore's Law is true here - mobile phones are getting "smarter", as are other devices. As this happens, it will probably make sense to run Java SE on these devices.  BUT - Java SE doesn't have certain capabilities that we will all need/want in our mobile phones - things like bluetooth support and SMS messaging.

Enter Java ME & the APIs of the Mobile Service Architecture to provide these capabilities and other mobile-specific fuctionality.

Looking in my crystal ball, I can only guess that the future will have both Java SE AND Java ME APIs running on "smart" devices.

And for the "regular" feature phones?  Billions of people around the world will continue to use these phones running the Java ME platform. In addition, people will continue to develop applications based on Java ME and the Java ME specification will continue to evolve.