India has overtaken the US and China to emerge as the largest developer location for Sun Microsystems, with over 6.29 lakh programmers working on Java and Solaris platforms.

This is over 82 per cent of the total 11.50-lakh developers working on various platforms in the country.

The present number of programmers working on Sun Microsystems platforms in China and the US �  is around 6.25 lakh.

"There is a huge momentum being witnessed in the country during the past three months like during the pre-dot.com era. This has  led to the number of developers working on our platforms surpassing that in the US and China," Sun Microsystems Director Marketing and Alliances K P Unnikrishnan said.

This could also result in India registering more Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) and the decision-making shifting to the country, which at present is only considered as an outsourcing destination.

According to Unnikrishnan, the increase in number of programmers will require the company to increase its investments in the country.

This is because Sun Microsystems invests in training, providing free software and offering hardware at a discounted rate to developers in the country.

However, he declined to provide the investment details in the country.  The Santa Clara-headquartered company has over 26 Java and 11 Solaris � its two major developer platforms � in the country.

Moreover, its initiatives like the start-up essential programme (an attempt to help start-up firms use Sun technologies) and Sun Developer Network (a programme to empower academic developers in the country) were getting good responses in the country. 

For example, start-up essential programme, which started in the country in September 2007, has garnered over 125 sign-ups in just four months, he said.

Sun Microsystems employs around 40,000 personnel in the country.