Oracle is in the process of purchasing Sun Microsystems, and speaking at an event today Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said the company will work to grow the use of Sun’s Java software on a variety of consumer and business devices, including netbooks. That makes sense. But Ellison also said that Oracle might build its own netbook that uses a Java based operating system. And that makes about as much sense to me as Microsoft developing a portable MP3 player.
Oh, right.
So I guess it could happen. Right now Oracle is better known for making software. But the company could leverage Sun’s hardware expertise or find a Taiwanese hardware maker willing to manufacturer a netbook for you these days, and it would be interesting to see what kind of operating system or software Oracle would load that hypothetical netbook up with.
Update: OK, now that I found a video of Ellison’s remarks, it looks to me like he was saying Oracle/Sun could develop apps and/or an operating system for netbooks, but he wasn’t necessarily suggesting that the company would build its own netbook. See for yourself:
With the power of cloud computing and virtualization,java can create the true surprise.
Java-based operating system – so, a bit like Android then, which is a Java-based API running on a bare-bones Linux kernel?
Actually I would love to see what they would come up with. I probably wouldn’t want to OWN it, but I can bet it would be different.
Somebody at Sun forgot to throw out the “Java PC” stuff before Oracle found it. 😉
When did Sun become “better known for making software” ?
https://www.sun.com/servers/index.jsp?tab=2
Since I was suffering from Computex exhaustion and forgot to proofread
my last article before hitting publish.
Updated. 🙂