The rapid development of palm-top computing and digital cellular telephony is providing an opportunity for lightweight information appliances. Whether delivering information or mobile computing, these appliances will become indispensable through their capability to access the Internet from any place via telephone and modem or via a wireless connection. Java, one of the important Internet-enabling languages, is not directly supported by any microprocessor architecture that has seen significant volume shipments. A microprocessor can become Java-enabled via a program, a Java Virtual Machine interpreter, sometimes sped up by a Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler, or by hardware which may also include some support software.

"Java Hits the Road: Accelerators in Mobile Applications" covers calendar years 2000-2005 history and forecast of shipments of Java VM Intellectual Property via cores, software and combinations of the two. The report also covers battery-operated computing devices, browsers and Internet-enabled digital cellular telephones. The report covers battery-operated devices because these will require minimal power consumption, lowest cost of bill-of-materials and minimal physical dimensions. The report provides world-wide unit shipments and revenue between the years 2000-2005. It also positions the business of Java acceleration within the context of microprocessor cores, their royalties and the creation of architecture extensions that support Java.