The only people who "destroyed" the market for Java (for mobile / desktop that is) were Sun / Oracle. Let us count the ways:
1. Failing to ship the "consumer JRE" until about 8 years too late. Startup times got a lot better with the consumer JRE, but it was too little, too late.
2. Not shipping support for important audio/video codecs out of the box.
3. Took way too long to add support for things that let Java apps appear somewhat native, like "system tray" support, etc.
4. Kept Java closed-source way past the date when it was becoming obvious that going OSS would be advantageous.
As bad as J2ME was, phone vendors were paying for it. And then they stopped paying. So in some sense it is literally true that iOS and Android destroyed the J2ME market. But blaming your competitor for out-competing you is a loser's excuse.
Wait, that sounds like early Linux. Late on drivers; late on support for office apps; hardware support always a generation behind. Yet it thrived. Its easy to blame folks for being late, back when there was little money in something, thus little investment. Everything starts slow.
Oracle is the one hurting the market for java with their ego driven proprietary API case. It seems that is SOP at Oracle though, where even customer relationships are "predominantly hostile and filled with deep-rooted mistrust." http://ubm.io/1Fv21WP
Oracle should take a page out of Google's book and reorganize their cashflow/m&a business more like a hedge fund instead of pretending that their is some sort of cohesive strategy around their product offering.
1. Failing to ship the "consumer JRE" until about 8 years too late. Startup times got a lot better with the consumer JRE, but it was too little, too late.
2. Not shipping support for important audio/video codecs out of the box.
3. Took way too long to add support for things that let Java apps appear somewhat native, like "system tray" support, etc.
4. Kept Java closed-source way past the date when it was becoming obvious that going OSS would be advantageous.
Etc, etc...