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
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.
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