>>HTML5 is barely out of the box and already outdated in some ways - no multi-touch support for instance.

Multitouch is a good example of the hardware-specific features that I mentioned here in a similar thread. There's a big difference between capacitive and resistive screens with not all phones offering multitouch. In addition, newer phones are growing other extra features such as fingerprint scanners and IP screencasting, which will allow multiscreen viewing of phone content, e.g. for a developer. Nobody wants to write apps for the lowest common denominator (and phone owners will resent it) so inevitably a standard like HTML5 is going to end up with plugins and conditional code depending what features are available.

My expectation is that a nimble young firm is going to repeat the FP2.x experience, bringing something to market that makes a front end easy, handles local cache, automatically spools to Cloud and ties neatly into phone-specific APIs whatever they may be. IMHO it will be accessible to people at all levels of expertise, just as FP used to be.