You're thinking about this from an engineer's perspective. Logic and facts and such.

The key thing to realize is that in the commercial world, THAT DOESN'T MATTER. Perception is everything. Facts are a distant second. Having a good platform is necessary, but not sufficient. The spin and marketing are everything.

It's ALL about the public opinion. How many cool technological innovations have lost because of poor marketing?

Look at Apple's own 1980s experience with the Macintosh versus Windows. They've learned their lesson, and now they're marketing experts. They have successfully trained the public to believe they invented cool features.

And, incidentally, their phone really does work better compared to every other clunky phone web browser I've ever used, including Android.

How about some non-subjective reasons? The UI is designed intuitively - to adapt to human thought processes, rather than forcing the user to adapt to computer programming conveniences, or the convoluted thoughts of a semi-autistic KDE developer. If you need a painfully detailled explanation, check out http://developer.apple.com/documentation/userexperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGIntro/chapter_1_section_1.html