Eclipse Foundation Releases Mobile Java ToolsEclipse Foundation Releases Mobile Java Tools

The Eclipse Foundation on Wednesday released a new Java developer tool that it said will make it easier to create mobile applications.

The Eclipse Mobile Tools for Java project features support for all Unified Emulator Interface-compliant software development kits, and a preprocessor of Java ME code integrated on the build environment. The EclipseME and NetBeans projects have also been imported, and it has support for Java ME emulators like MPowerplayer and MicroEmu.

"The new MTJ release is an important milestone towards establishing Eclipse as the standard platform for mobile development," Christian Kurzke, Eclipse MTJ project lead and developer tools architect at Motorola, said in a statement. "We are excited to be joining forces with the EclipseME community to provide a common platform for all the mobile vendors to build up."

When it comes to mobile applications, things like the Apple App Store gets a lot of the attention, but the iPhone represent a very small percent of the entire cell phone market. By contrast, the Java ME platform is available on hundreds of handsets from manufacturers including Motorola, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson.

The MTJ release is collaboration with the open source EclipseME project, which has been around since 2003, and it has been downloaded more than 600,000 times.

"I'm excited and proud to see EclipseME grow up and take on a new role as the new Eclipse Mobile Tools for Java implementation," said Craig Setera, EclipseME project leader, in a statement. "This is recognition of all the hard work of myself and many individuals in the EclipseME community. I look forward to seeing the MTJ project grow and thrive under the umbrella of the Eclipse Foundation."

The Eclipse MTJ 0.9 is available now and can be downloaded here.