According to industry analysts, Vodafone’s stake in Japan Telecom will provide the U.K. phone company will a cheap and convenient testing ground for 3G phones, to kick off for the first time in Japan next year.

• Java 2 platform, micro edition (J2ME).
• Employ the mobile information device profile, an industry standard, for the specifications called profile, which is used to develop Java applications.
• Support for MIDP, which is capable of running the same applications regardless of the communication method device.

• Enhanced agent software for automatically obtaining data from networks
• Better gaming software
• Improved security during time spent accessing content

J-Phone and Vodafone are not the first off the mark with a Java-compliant phone. NTT DoCoMo has developed and, recently, launched its Java-based mobile phone known as 503i for its i-mode service. However, NTT DoCoMo has altered its profile meaning that content providers will have to create two different Java applications to meet the Java specifications of NTT DoCoMo and J-Phone.

J-Phone plans to launch its Java-compatible phone in the spring, at which time it will be competing with the release of KDDI group’s Java-based mobile phone. The KDDI phone will embed NTT DoCoMo’s own profile into its Java specifications.

Despite all the talk about moving toward wireless compatibility, the Achilles’ heel of Java-based phones is the incompatibility of Java applets. It remains to be seen when and how the problem will be dealt with.