Well... they certainly were far behind.

But I think that PIM software and java were omitted for different reasons.

PIM software was omitted, because they don't want to market the 770 as a PIM device. PIMs are dead, more and more people use their phone for that. PIMs have lots of competition. PIMs are difficult to develop, because you need synchronization.

They want to market the 770 as a surf and mail machine (and possibly as a web phone latter on). No competition, no synchronization and a developping market.

The ommission of java is different. Maybe they were just too far behind. Maybe it was too expensive. Maybe they will put it in maemo 2006. Who knows?

The question is: "java, what for?". If it's phone type games, they have little incentive (they won't get revenue for them as they do for phones). If it is for corporate software, IBM tried to market the Zaurus as a java portable solution and failed. And of course: when the Zaurus was developped, java was "in". Today: who cares?