Sun to launch app store

Sun is going to announce its own app stores at the Java Conference on 1st of June in San Francisco. According to Sun, Java powers more than 4.5 billion devices, including about 2.1 billion mobile phones and handhelds as well as more than 800 million PCs, 3.5 billion smart cards and myriad set-top boxes, printers, games, car navigation systems and related technologies.

While details on the Java store otherwise remain scarce, it seems that added candidate applications will be submitted via the web, evaluated by Sun for safety and content and presented under free or premium terms to the broad Java audience. "Over time, developers will bid for position on our storefront, and the relationships won't be exclusive (as they have been for search)," he writes. "As with other app stores, Sun will charge for distribution--but unlike other app stores, whose audiences are tiny, measured in the millions or tens of millions, ours will have what we estimate to be approximately a billion users. That's clearly a lot of traffic, and will position the Java App Store as having just about the world's largest audience."

From Fierce Mobile Content