Sun Admits the Future's in Handsets

For those who don't know, Jonathan Schwartz (Sun's CEO) has his own blog, which I enjoy a lot. He posts to it pretty regularly and he actually makes me think with his posts as opposed to just shilling for his company.

In a recent entry, he talks about the future of the handset market. While he was saying that the killer app for mobile phones is just talk, he now says he's coming around to the fact that in more advanced parts of the world (i.e. Europe and Asia) people are staring at the phones instead of yapping in them.

"...I was asked a simple question by an investor last week, "what's the one thing you think the market doesn't understand about Sun's opportunity?"

My response: that the majority of the world will use the internet through their phones, not through a PC."

Hmmm... So is Sun basically saying that they're going to get into the handset market? Or are they pointing out that their mobile Java solution is going to be a big source of future profits? Something else? He doesn't really spell it out. But I did enjoy him taking a potshot at Microsoft:

And I don't know about you, but when I sample my nieces and nephews, even those in the USA, with "which would you rather have, a new iPod, a Motorola RAZR, Danger's HipTop, Microsoft's XBox or Windows Vista?", I get a pretty consistent answer. (Hint: it ain't Vista.)

Ha!