I agree, but the unfortunate reality is that the thing that makes browsers on desktop so great -- fierce competition -- is virtually non-existent on mobile. It's why vendors can get away with only shipping updates to the browser once per year. And the chances of this changing aren't great. It's widely accepted that for "security reasons", browsers competition can't be allowed.
That's only true on iOS. There is real competition in the browser space on Android and the Mozilla Betas are actually very good browsers. But of course that's kind of a moot point because the mobile web is only as good as the lowest common denominator.
But to give Apple credit mobile Safari is a better browser than any but the most recent alternatives.
No but it's not because competition isn't allowed, but because users are no more likely to manually switch browsers on their phones than they are on the desktop. Google's emphasis on Chrome in recent versions of Android is certainly a step in the right direction here but it will likely be another two years before the majority of Android users are running a really first-class browser thanks to the slow uptake of Android updates.
But I really think the discoverability advantages people cite for the app stores is highly overrated. If you can squeeze your way into the top twenty then maybe there's some real benefit but for most apps the app store is just an opaque box with primitive SEO and analytics.
Because it's not good yet. I've tried it and it does some things better, but is slightly slower and much buggier (2 lockups of the tablet -- which I consider to be an Android problem too)
