US manufacturer Motorola on Wednesday issued a call to reduce the heavy fragmentation of the Java platform for mobile devices. The vendor appealed to the broader Java Micro Edition (ME) ecosystem to establish a complete Java ME software stack for the mobile industry, under the Apache License Version 2.0.

Motorola said it will work to align its future Java ME-based developments with Apache’s model of licensing and open governance “in order to help promote a unified mobile Java platform.”

The US company believes a unified platform would lead to lower overall development and testing costs, a reduction in time to market and the creation of a larger market opportunity for developers. Effectively realising the “write once, run everywhere” promise of Java ME applications that has so far failed to materialise.

“We see industry fragmentation and proprietary software models as an obstacle to unharnessing the full power of innovation in the mobile Java ecosystem. We believe developers, customers, partners and the industry at large will benefit from a new open source model,” said Mark VandenBrink, senior director and chief platform architect of the Motorola Mobile Devices business.