What everyone is missing... (Score 1)

Put yourself in Nokia's, Ericsson's, or any other handset/wired PDA manufacturer's shoes. You want people to be able to develop great new applications for your devices, but at the same time, you don't want people's applications preventing your devices from functioning. In steps Java (J2ME), which offers you a great sandbox for those apps, free documentation on how to actually write these apps (which would've been costly and difficult to develop), as well as decent functionality through the few APIs that it supports. Furthermore, Java offers your developers a set platform for these apps. As long as the standards don't change, the same Java app will run across any new Java phones that you manufacture.