Is Amazon hoping/expecting big companies to buy Kindles in bulk for their employees to use these applications, or are they going for a large number of developers that already know Java so that development seems easier? My experience in big companies is that they don't buy new devices for everyone. It's more likely that a significant number of employees have to purchase devices outside of work and bring them into the office before the company considers supporting the device with applications.
Simultaneous release? It could be another VM, but it smells like Java to me.
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=639899&p... http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61093
For some previous attempts to hack apps together. It uses a modified AWT for display. The problem has always been that the API was heavily obfuscated.