[shimi]

It was, but it was next to impossible to get a half decent application released on any J2ME phone not to mention the impossible fragmentation (compare to the J2ME beast the Android fragmentation is a sweet tamed puppy).

Java is also installed on a bazillion desktops, numbers don't change the fact that the ui framework is very bad.

Historically applets lost to flash for that same reason

[mgkimsal]

Wasn't is stuck on Java (the language 1.1)? Any Java developers who came in at 1.2, 1.3 or 1.4 would have had to re/un-learn how to do certain things they took for granted.

[7952]

The lack of good apps is hardly surprising. The screens were tiny, and they lacked an app store. Its hard to have ad supported apps on a tiny screen.