Decent J2ME developer communities for China, Japan, Taiwan, HK?

Question

We're evaluating a potential investment opportunity to port our J2ME applications from English/UK to Far Eastern markets. We're having trouble finding ANY information about things such as handsets, platforms, etc., and in particular, operator/carrier policies regarding supported network functionality and policies.

We have reams of questions so I think the best place to start would be some developer community sites, but we can't find any that are both English and up to date. If you know of any please fire away!

I guess the overriding question is would it be the done thing to build a J2ME midlet, that uses TCP sockets extensively, and expect to be able to port it and distribute it in these markets? Do many handsets support J2ME? Will the operators allow sockets out-of-the-box? And every other question I can think of right now... apologies but we don't know where to start!

• Handsets (models, market share, resolutions, J2ME support)
• Operators (market share, walled garden policies, data tariffs)
• Distribution (aggregators, app stores, operator portals)
• Test Houses (every handset, every operator, localisation)

Answer 1

J2ME is pretty much supported everywhere. I´ve ported some applications to Korean and Hebrew, so my advice is this:

• Get in contact with service provider in the market you wish enter, they can give you plenty of information about handsets and distribution, data tariffs, etc;
• TCP connection is available on every J2me capable device I´ve seen, but you should confirm that for your target handsets before porting to them;
• You should REALLY be carefull when localising your application, bad translations will make your users hate you

I´ll will edit this answers as I think of more advice, if you wish.

Answer 2

Some operators will not allow you tcp sockets at all but let HTTP connections through.

Answer 3

How about consult to the VM vendors inside these area, for instance: Aplix or Esmertec?

It's not that easy to find a community using English instead of native language.

# I'm from Taiwan, and AFAIK, most handsets here are sold with J2ME included. But in Japan market, DOJA is the profile they use. Hope this helps.