Platforms present a great opportunity for Palm OS developers to leverage application knowledge into the mass-market of 170 million devices expected by the end of 2004. Developers have the choice of working in Java™ or browsing environments available on all platform devices. A Symbian C++ environment is available on some of the platforms for those applications requiring access to large memory heaps or other advanced features only available in a native programming environment.

Always-available connectivity through a mobile phone network means that consumers are not tied to occasional updates of application data through hot synching. Platform devices from Nokia can update data whenever there is a need to refresh it. This is especially important in vertical and horizontal enterprise applications and even with many personal productivity programs.

This is a great time for Palm developers to move into Java development. Personal productivity applications and games can be written once and then ported to J2ME™ devices from Nokia and other manufacturers, opening up a huge potential market. It is very easy to port or create Java business applications on platform devices. Developers can use standard high-level J2ME UI widgets like forms, pop-up alerts, and textfields to easily create the application UI. IDE tools, like Borland JBuilder, even have visual editors enabling developers to easily design the UI.

It will not be always possible to duplicate all of the features of an existing Palm application in a J2ME environment; that's where Symbian OS C++ support comes in. The C++ environment available on the Series 60 Platform and the Series 80 Platform all provide multi-megabyte memory heaps and access to virtually all the functionality available on each device.

Seize the volume opportunity offered by Nokia platforms and port your Palm application to Nokia. Our new micro-site has a wealth of guidance on the process. Read more about porting your application to Nokia platforms »