The competition

Daniel Zwolenski zonski at
Fri Nov 30 07:42:22 PST 2012

It's the space that oracle doesn't care about but just for reference here's some stuff that web are doing:

My analysis of this market segment, for what it is worth:

Web is moving faster than jfx, with a head start in a lot of areas, with big backing from all vendors and a deployment model that is seamless across more platforms. 

Jfx being based on established, type-safe java and having all the java libraries/tools makes it a big draw card for developers compared to jscript. However there is little benefit to users and it is users who will drive the choice of technology. Feature wise jfx and web are generally on par - in many cases web is better but generally in areas not fully standardized yet so limited to certain browsers etc. Standardization is happening quickly in web unlike the days of old. In general web is improving faster than the current jfx road map. 

In JFX's favour is the java brand and libraries from java's dominance in the server space. Java's reputation plus one-language/WORA end to end are the key selling points for jfx. 

One-language/WORA is currently a perceived advantage only since jfx does not work on as many platforms as web and it is only server side that jscript does not currently compete. Developers are starting to realize that jfx is not delivering on wora and business decision makers are unlikely to be convinced by developers without WORA as a selling point. 

Several early forays of jscript into the server space have already happened with some minor success. Expect this to be a growth area and the wora/one-language advantage could switch, making it one of the draw cards of jscript over jfx within the next 12 months (though java on the server is likely to dominate for many years still through pure momentum and market position). Jscript is also being enhanced to have more appeal to developers, however it has a lot of legacy perceptions to overcome before it will appeal to traditional server developers. 

Performance is also a perceived advantage of jfx (web is currently perceived as slow, whereas as 'desktop' is seen as fast) however in practice jfx is no faster than modern browsers and web is increasingly improving performance. The perceived advantage will be short lived especially with windows 8 driving more pc upgrades and the inevitable drop off of ie7 and ie8 (responsible for most of the negative performance opinions). Web is rapidly addressing its perceived performance issues. 

The mobile space is currently still open. The technology that provides good cross-mobile development will dominate here. Existing solutions like phone gap have had mixed success. WORA is the selling point but poor user experience and performance are the main complaints. Jscript based solutions are improving however and there are a number of vendors targeting this space. Phones typically have a 2 to 3 year life cycle so as we start to see the drop off of older android devices, jscript solutions will become more performant and user friendly. 

Javafx has a small window, maybe 12 months at most, of opportunity to capture some of the consumer market space. Mobile is particularly open but web is also in a transition state and some aggressive positioning could see jfx capitalize on the java brand to establish itself before web achieves its current trajectory. Claiming some market space now coupled with java server dominance could see jfx survive the onslaught of html5 frenzy. 

Deployment is currently the number one inhibitor to both the web and mobile space. A good deployment model is needed on major platforms to have broad range appeal. 

Should javafx not gain market space before the "html5" era truly establishes itself then jfx is unlikely to ever make it into the consumer space in its current form. It is likely to continue to have some market share in select back-office environments (particularly those that oracle is directly working with) and may spread a little wider if alternate deployment solutions such as running javafx ontop of jscript, or compiling to jscript are implemented. 

In the embedded space, java and javafx is well positioned with hardware/technology at the sweet point for embedded jre usage. Expect this to be a growth area over the next few years with javafx likely to dominate this space. 

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