I'll echo the other reply to your post -- have you any experience with webOS?

I've gone back and forth between webOS and iOS phones over the past couple years, and while webOS is not better in every way, and is significantly handicapped in some ways, it's also significantly better than iOS in some ways. I really don't see webOS phones as poor attempts to jump on a bandwagon just to scrape whatever profit they can. This is much more a case of healthy competition.

I too expect Apple will eventually adopt a similar multitasking paradigm for iOS (you could call it Exposé-inspired, or webOS-inspired, as you wish), negating webOS's most obvious advantage. Which you could attribute to the effects of competition. Or maybe Apple would have inevitably done it once the hardware got powerful enough -- who knows.