More details have been released here about the Vodafone/Nokia alliance for improving the portability of J2ME products.

It's pretty fluffy: they're basically saying "we'll consolidate the variety that exists today in J2ME into common APIs, arranged into a couple of different classes of devices". Hmm, where have we seen this before? Series 40/60/etc. families of device.

If Vodafone get behind this it'll be a really good thing: the worlds largest mobile network operator collaborating with the worlds largest handset vendor to bring a bit of regulation to new handsets. Unfortunately, the more regulation you have, the more a zappy new handset from one of the other manufacturers is going to stand out... and there's no guarantee that VF and Nokia will really commit to this relationship anyway.