Version 2.0 of the Java Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) has arrived, hailing improvements and new features to improve on the current J2ME abilities of mobile devices.

Sun today announced the completion of the Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP 2.0) standard and the availability of the final MIDP 2.0 specification, reference implementation, compatibility test suite, and beta version of the J2ME Wireless Toolkit 2.0. Developed by more than 50 wireless industry leaders worldwide to extend the base collection of Java technologies for mobile devices, MIDP 2.0 supports new and enhanced gaming, graphics, video, audio, security, and many other features for mobile devices such as mobile phones and personal digital assistants.

MIDP is a set of Java APIs that, together with the Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC), provides a complete J2ME application runtime environment to support the majority of low-cost mobile information devices in use today, including mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and two-way pagers.

Numbers show that the wireless industry has more or less standardized on Java technology for wireless data services; more than 50 million Java-technology enabled handsets have already been shipped worldwide by major carriers, representing all the main wireless network systems, including GSM/GPRS, CDMA, PDC, iDEN, and W-CDMA. Twenty of the world's leading carriers currently offer 29 deployments of Java-technology based mobile services in Asia, Europe and the United States, while more than 30 additional deployments are planned or in trial.

New features in MIDP 2.0 are plentiful, and includes an enhanced user interface which aims to improve the overall end-user experience with several enhancements to make applications more interactive and easier to use. Media support has also been extended, allowing developers to leverage the full audio capabilities of each device, adding audio such as tones, tone sequences and WAV files to MIDP applications using a standard platform.

A new Game API provides a standard foundation for building rich games, taking advantage of native device graphics capabilities to simplify matters for developers and provide greater control over graphics and performance, while connectivity is no longer a matter of just HTTP, but also HTTPS, datagram, sockets, server sockets, and serial port communication, providing applications different way to exchange data with back-end services.

MIDP 2.0 also includes a server push model whereby MIDlets can be registered to be activated when a device receives information from a server. This enables developers to leverage the event-driven capabilities of devices and carrier networks, and easily include alerts, messaging and broadcasts using a standard approach in MIDP applications. Mobile applications expected to make use of the technology include news updates, stock trading, online auctions, real-time messaging and more.

To ensure a standard approach to MIDP application deployment that works across a range of mobile devices, OTA provisioning is now required as part of the MIDP specification. It defines how MIDlet suites are discovered, installed, updated and removed on mobile devices and enables a service provider to identify which MIDlet suites will work on a given device, and obtain status reports from the device following installation, updates or removal.

This new version also adds end-to-end security, built on open standards such as HTTPS and leveraging existing standards including SSL and WTLS to enable the transmission of encrypted data. It is expected that 2003 will see a number of handsets with support for the new version.