The problem with VM languages (Java, Python, Ruby, all of them) is that the VM itself and its libraries constitute an enormous dependency that you must either manage compatibility with if you are to use the natively installed one or ship with your product. The latter offends my personal aversion to bloat... I hate shipping something where there's 100X as much data in dependencies than in the product itself. "Here's my 2MB app and its 120MB of VM bloat..."
Python has some decent tooling in this area, so that helps. But VM language authors take note-- this is a big problem that needs to be solved.
Also why I find Google Go interesting: it's compiled as far as I know, and requires few dependencies to ship. (A few libs? That can probably be static if you want?)