Sun Microsystems sees a bright future for the company's Java software on mobile phones. CEO Jonathan Schwartz is even willing to predict that the marketplace is "going to be defined by the consuming public as much as by the traditional IT decision-maker."

During a press and analyst event at the company's Menlo Park campus recently, Schwartz kicked off the event with a keynote and panel discussion that specifically went over mobile phones in the emerging markets. Brazil, Russia, India, China and Africa (BRICA) were the main nations highlighted.  

Why are companies -- including mobile device manufacturers -- targeting the emerging markets?  It appears there are "already more mobile phones than wire lines in BRIC countries," according to Sun.  As noted by Reuters, mobile phones in the emerging markets are quickly outpacing wired telephone lines as the main method of communication.

According to numbers compiled by Sun, there are "more than 4B Java devices" on the market worldwide.

Even though many of the countries are still updating the way they can create infrastructures to support PCs, mobile phone access continues to grow at an alarming rate.  China alone has more than 600 million phones, with more than 1 billion expected within the next decade, according to one of the panelists during the event.