[imperialWicket]

That's a meaningful data point, and impressive! Nonetheless, I think Opera is exceptional for a few reasons and for a smaller dev, there's little practicality to J2ME. It's much more difficult to charge for or in your apps, and without a known brand, having your own wap or download site isn't productive because you still won't get much traffic.

I'm really just highlighting that while some of the aspects have allure, many of the challenges that are present in the current 'mobile' (android|iOS) landscape are simply heightened in the j2me world.

[johansch]

Yeah, this is clearly something that only applies before the advent of in phone app stores. Back then word of mouth was the thing. This worked particularly well in developing economies for us with Opera Mini.