Global IT major Sun Microsystems has garnered over half of the total developer population in India, while the country has retained its position of being the largest developer location for the company.

The total number of programmers working on Sun Microsystems' platforms in India has risen to 740,000, retaining the country's position as the leading developer location across the world.  This is over 50 per cent of the total developer community in the country.

In comparison, the company has deployed 700,000 developers in China and around 600,000 in the US. In January this year, India had overtaken the US and China to emerge as the largest developer location for Sun Microsystems with over 629,000 programmers working on its platforms.

"By the end of the financial year, we had around 7.40 lakh developers working mainly on Solaris and Java platforms. The numbers include programmers, evangelists and brand ambassadors," Sun Microsystems vice-president and managing director Anil Valluri told reporters on the sidelines of Sun Technovate '08, an annual technology event hosted by the company.

Sun Microsystems's financial year starts on July 1 and ends on June 30. The company competes with firms such as IBM and Microsoft in the country.

The Santa Clara-headquartered company has over 26 Java and 8 Solaris - its two major developer platforms - user groups in the country.

Valluri also said that the company recorded a 28 per cent growth in India, installed over 150,000 systems and emerged as the number two for sales of storage and Linux systems.

"Most of the growth came from the retail sector, while expansion into newer areas in the central and eastern India also helped," Valluri said.