[beguiledfoil]

>Maybe I'm giving too much credit to the ghost of Steve Jobs.

You certainly are.

Apple (well, NeXT) took Unix, slapped on a nice hardware accelerated graphics layer, and then made sure it worked (on the web, in the office suite, in the mail client, in the music player, in the video player, etc). You can make the mobile version of that product in a month now, army of one style, and come up with something that's better for whatever corner of the market you intend to target - even if it's just your friends or your countrymen.

One trick ponies have a hard time learning new tricks, and Apple has always been a one trick pony. For now their mobile product is still the best - and enough of their competitors are chasing stupid ideas that they can probably coast for another 5 years. We'll see what happens long term.