Eclipse Pulsar Gains Momentum with Mobile Industry Leaders

The Eclipse Foundation today announced a new release of Eclipse Pulsar, an application development tools platform for mobile developers. The new release extends support to the Ericsson and Sony Ericsson developer communities.

Pulsar is the result of collaboration among leaders in the mobile industry to provide a common set of Eclipse-based tools in a single packaged distribution that supports multiple software development kits (SDKs). With Pulsar, developers can use a single, familiar development environment to create mobile applications that target different devices. With today's release, Pulsar now supports SDKs from Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson and Sony Ericsson.

"Ericsson is a longtime Eclipse member, and participating in the Pulsar initiative aligns with our business goals," said Roland Svensson, Vice President, Portfolio Management and Technology at Ericsson. "We believe Pulsar has the potential to make it easier for mobile developers to gain access to the tools and SDKs they require."

Stefan Qelthin, Head of SW Environment for Sony Ericsson, also noted: "Pulsar brings together a common tools platform that allows participating handset makers to focus on providing value added tools for their developer communities. Sony Ericsson is pleased to be part of this industry initiative and hope it will help fuel a broader ecosystem of mobile apps and opportunities for the developer."

Members of the Pulsar initiative aim to work across four key areas:

• The creation of the packaged distribution called Eclipse Pulsar Platform;
• A technical roadmap to advance the capabilities of the platform;
• A set of best practices which includes documentation and test suites; and
• Education and outreach to drive adoption of Pulsar with mobile application developers.

"Pulsar is delivering on its promise to streamline the development of mobile applications, arguably the hottest growth area in the mobile market today," noted Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director, Eclipse Foundation. "Pulsar is also a great example of how Eclipse continues to be a platform for collaboration. We are pleased that Ericsson and Sony Ericsson have joined Motorola and Nokia in Pulsar, and look forward to their contributions to making Pulsar a truly definitive mobile application development tools platform."