On the latter, why is that? Is it that Java's VM is already very mature and the community doesn't feel that urgency on "improving" it? Another question. What does Java VM have to do with Android?

I'm not a mobile developer so you shouldn't ask me but basically because of web browsers there's a JS VM in every PC and smartphone nowadays which isn't necessarily the case with Java. And Android runs its applications on a Java VM called Dalvik: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalvik_(software)

Dalvik is not a Java VM though it is a VM. As of Lollipop Android left the whole VM thing behind and moved to ART so there is no stagnation on that front You linked to the page that states it all but its like you didn't bother to read it yourself.

Dalvik is a joke, even v8 is faster than it and it's not a JVM. That's why Oracle was trying to sue Google.

I'm pretty sure that's wrong on both counts. Android has the NDK and iOS apps can be written in straight C/C++.

Ok thank you, that information is pretty hard to stumble upon when you don't know where to search. Although on Android you can't seem to be able to build a whole "native app", only some components of it cf this now removed quote from:

http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html

> If you write native code, your applications are still packaged into an .apk file and they still run inside of a virtual machine on the device.