After tech giant Oracle completes its acquisition of Sun Microsystems later this year, it's possible the company may enter the netbook market. The company remains silent about whether it would focus on software or hardware, or both, but it seems more likely Oracle would rather focus on software -- for now.
"I don't see why some of those devices shouldn't come from Sun-Oracle," Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said during a brief appearance at the Sun JavaOne conference.
Since Oracle is best known as a software company, it'd be surprising if company executives decided to stray away from its roots after an entrance into the netbook market. I look for the company to one day create software and programs specifically for the smaller, more portable devices -- there are a slew of hardware companies, including SanDisk, jumping into the market at the moment.
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Both Ellison and others at JavaOne mentioned Java will likely become more prominent in the netbook and telephone markets later down the road. Specifically, it should be interesting to see how Sun-Oracle tackle the adoption of JavaFX on netbooks and other mobile devices. Oracle is strongly backing Java, so expect a big marketing push for both Java and JavaFX after the Sun acquisition is finalized.
"Java was a very attractive platform for us because it was open and it allowed us to extend the platform," Ellison said during JavaOne. "Our whole next generation of business applications, something we call the Fusion suite of applications, is built entirely on Java. We think it's going to be very attractive to our customers and to the community."
