"but probably lots of implementation needed when it comes to binding Java Services to it

Possibly true.

My consumers have typically been perl, javascript, php, or python - all dynamic folk. Yes - potentially there could be a little more work for those using Java, but I don't really think there would be that much more. In actuality I doubt any existing JSON service would be much easier to bind to Java. Unless you are using a WSDL I doubt there are many (if any) JSON web service libraries that would do the automatic type conversions that you get with WSDL.

Either way, Java will likely have top-notch JSON classes - and if they do then constructing an appropriate JSON message would not be difficult, nor would getting information out of a JSON response and type casting. Ultimately that isn't really that more work than fiddling with WDSLs and having to pull information out of the automatically parsed structure returned by the SOAP libraries. The real time it is faster and easier with SOAP is when you are passing struct type objects and consuming those objects on the client end - very little of my work has ever wanted to deal with information in that form.