The problem is way deeper than the UI itself. You think a socket, a thread and a file somehow magically become multi-platform because of c++ ? Chromium embed is 100Mb for a reason just like Java and Qt. The dependencies define the app and not hipster culture. Mocking UI is a sport for people who do not understand the underlying problem. Huge industrial sewer pipeline is too ugly for my living room, etc.
Apple, Microsoft and Google made three different phone UI API´s for the same problem just to lock people in. Apple and Google then beat Microsoft at their own game because they themselves defined the marked. Legal bullshit and patents is the main driving force behind all this non-standard API idiocy. Everyone claims to be unique and non-obvious.
Native apps on many platforms are easy when most of the work is server side. So native is now big because of servers, multi-touch dependencies and code signing complexity. Hybrid is big when the client does all the work. HTML/CSS works when you are showing a document, a list or a form.
Having read actual Samsung code I would guess it was written in India by someone who uses copy/paste instead of a small library. I understand that runtime dependencies are a problem in embedded programming, but the Bada platform suffers because it was written by lots of people who were all not talking to each other.
Fax and email as services does not really age. They are simply integrated as servers, messaging applications and printers. A VCR is now Netflix minus the record button. Byproducts of the underlying network topography, storage options and short term legal agreements. A future without fax is a service restriction, not modernity.
Desktop software is desktop because of mouse. Touch software replaces mouse with hand gestures on screen or panel. But web apps still trying to be 1990 desktop replacement. Soon biometric feedback makes this painfully obvious. Security and compatibility is key. But Apple and Microsoft refuse to agree on anything except basic web standards. Third player needed for anything to change.
Do you love VAT, taxes and payment problems ? Three people buying your software and then the $10 000 consulting payment keeping you afloat is delayed another month ? 1 star reviews, angry emails from paying customers and dangerous programming errors ? Being alone is brutal. You probably need partners who believe in the same idea as you.
Mozilla is the Mozilla of web apps. Without them we would have brain dead IE and Safari API´s. Stuff like VML and -webkit-match-nearest-mail-blockquote-color. Standards are what makes web apps possible. Who pays for running servers is another issue.
I wrote some clever code that fixed a problem on Windows. When running on Mac the same code leaked memory and blocked the event loop. 1 star - "crashed my entire computer".
Making money with a product is easy. Staying cash flow positive is not. Selling $10 for $5 works great as long as you have money to burn. But then reality sets in and as you point out "profit" becomes the keyword. My best guess is that people pay to solve annoying problems faster.
Sun has not made anything of user interface value over the last five years because of legal bullshit. Android fixes this problem. The reason Android exists is the massive NIH ego of Sun engineers, the total ignorance of Sun management and the fact that AWT/Swing is a desktop API that ignores mobile phones and tablets. Sun ignored video, audio, animation, maps, vector graphics, DPI/PPI differences, multitouch, GPS, sensors and memory consumtion. The AWT/Swing alternative called JavaFX ignores all the problems that Android solves. I respect Mr Goslings work, but AWT/Swing/JavaFX has nothing on Android and is unable to compete with WebOS or Bada from many years ago. Sun Java WebStart was such a bad product it infected more computers with malware than Adobe Flash over several years.
Java itself is a good product. J2EE works everywhere if you rip out AWT/Swing/JavaFX references. If you do use the UI code your app will probably blow up every couple of years because Sun hired a new developer or Apple is working fulltime on iOS Cocoa. Android is weird, but there is no other Java-like alternative except Windows Phone 7.