This news doesn't surprise me at all. My company was considering a new project to be written in Java, but after studying the technologies dumped that idea rather quickly for a C#/.NET solution. Java is so freakin slow, so all of our existing clients would have required new, faster machines to run it acceptably. And lining Dell's pockets rather than our own isn't part of the business plan. I've found .NET to be very fast... even for 3D graphics rendering.
Just look at the programming book aisles at any Borders bookstore. The shelves are packed with new books on .NET programming, with relatively few new Java books. The technical authors see the writing on the wall. Even the previously-open-source-focused oreilly.com has a big presence in .NET support. Made a lot of its followers unhappy -- but O'Reilly doesn't want its business to fade into irrelevance by ignoring .NET.
Also, I've sensed an industry-wide frustration with Sun's stranglehold on Java, and it's slowness to improve the platform. In contrast, MS has obviously committed a lot of programming talent and money geared toward developing and improving .NET.
And look at the development tools for .NET. There's no comparable equivalent for Visual Studio... Just another in a long line of missteps by Sun.
The bookstores, the programming websites, the energy/momentum, the development tools, and the stats in this article tell a story:
The Java ship is listing!