The Eclipse project will get a welcome boost when Nokia becomes a board member and strategic developer. The company will lead in developing tools for mobile applications based on the Eclipse platform, and plans to bring J2ME support in full to the Eclipse Java IDE.
As part of the move, Nokia will donate some of its own code to Eclipse, and dedicate resources to generating new tools for the platform. The company wants to be able to create applications based on the MIDP and CDC standards for Java, although in the longer term it also intends to use Eclipse for other languages.
The move should help Nokia increase the number of potential developers for its platforms, providing them with complete integrated tool packages optimised for Nokia platforms.
"By working closely with Eclipse, and proposing a new open source mobile development tools project, we will provide the more than two million registered developers in our Forum Nokia programme with complete integrated tool packages optimised for Nokia platforms" said Pertti Korhonen, Nokia's executive vice-president and chief technology officer in a statement.