Oracle's Ellison considers netbook market foray | Hacker News Reader

Oracle's Ellison considers netbook market foray

reuters.com

9 pointsmshafrir11 comments

Oof. From the article:

"I don't see why some of those devices shouldn't come from Sun," said Ellison, who runs the world's third-largest software maker. "There will be computers that are fundamentally based on Java."

My first reaction: the Java environment will attract more enterprise devs than consumer devs. These netbooks won't be popular with consumers.

My second reaction: enterprise netbooks? Sounds like a lot of money to be made, and the margins could be lifted by support contracts, bundling with expensive software, etc. Oracle netbooks as remote consoles for DBAs, for example.

And once all those corporate dudes have those JBooks around all the time, you have a market for consumer apps. Like when PC gaming established itself.

Nice to finally see a visionary in charge of Sun.

Visionary? That's a nice way of putting it. I'm wondering what the hell's he smoking to give him this vision of Sun flogging the lowest of low end, low margin commodity PCs. How are they going to make any money and what good will it do for the positioning of the Sun brand?

Well for a start, they could really champion Java on them. If they won with that, that would be a fantastic move - and it makes quite a bit of sense.

Makes sense in what way? I don't see any special synergy between Java and netbooks, certainly nothing that needs championing by Sun. If you need Java on your netbook - and most people don't - it's there already.

It makes sense in terms of having a stable platform to deploy apps to. Java has worked pretty well on mobile phones.

Imagine a netbook which just runs a java O/S. Maybe it has a java app store with all the apps you could ever want, and a kick ass browser.

Ellison was a visionary with Network Computers in the 90s, although that failed to take off.

Netbook's are a much safer bet now that many companies are already manufacturing them. It might be a good business move but I'd be hesitant to call that visionary.

Actually a netbook package with just enough smarts to connect to Wifi, plus VPN + Sun Ray software, would be great at expanding their Sun Ray installed base. Sun Ray users who use them at home say everything is zippy even over 256kbps connections.

Do either Sun or Oracle have the design know-how to pull this off?

I get the feeling they're making products that are as sexy as a boxy volvo. Reliable but... boring.

Not at all. The Sun netbooks will be beige, with purple corners!

And they will run on Java http://electronicdesign.com/Articles/ArticleID/4841/4841.htm...

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