As we mentioned earlier in this tutorial, a profile defines the type of device supported. The Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP), for example, defines classes for cellular phones. It adds domain-specific classes to the J2ME configuration to define uses for similar devices. Two profiles have been defined for J2ME and are built upon CLDC: KJava and MIDP. Both KJava and MIDP are associated with CLDC and smaller devices.

Profiles are built on top of configurations. Because profiles are specific to the size of the device (amount of memory) on which an application runs, certain profiles are associated with certain configurations.

A skeleton profile upon which you can create your own profile, the Foundation Profile, is available for CDC. However, for this tutorial and this section, we will focus only on the KJava and MIDP profiles built on top of CLDC.