Linux is coming of age in a post-desktop world, so the question is almost irrelevant. What IS relevant is that the biggest web technologies being used right now, as well as the technologies that will some day become dominant (Ruby, Scala, Haskell, Node.js, and others) are primarily for Linux and by Linux devs.
But as far as smartphones go, the question is still open, the market is still up for grabs, so developer-friendliness is going to be a top priority. Right now iPhone may be the top platform, but I would not underestimate Google's ability to appeal to developers (neither Apple's ability to make successive, giant leaps).
Second of all, those technologies are not Linux-centric, they are all cross-platform. A one-OS programming language/library is worthless in the present, except in rare cases such as specialized hardware-software solutions or in-house software.
Android has none of these problems, it is on a large amount of devices (more than ios), it is as shiny as Apples, but it has developers loving programming it.
Heck Linux own the server market so completely, that the only thing that could reasonably replace it would be another Unix.
Just like the year of Mac on the desktop, Linux is around 1% and Mac 5%... and Mac is backed by a multi-billion dollar company. I think it has more to do with Microsoft winning the desktop platform a long time ago than anything else. Where Linux and Mac can make a dent is in the web and mobile, and they already did.
android still has a good way to go to catch up and in order to google get there they have to add more control to the experience and succeed because it is good and not because is good enough
Google's not doing much better, in regards to remembering the rest of the world. Paid apps from Android App Store are only available in what? 12 countries?
However, I have to say that improving hardware on my Droid would be a waste of money without large improvements in the network. Even with fantastic 3G coverage, the bottleneck for most tasks I'm looking to accomplish is the network, not the device.
There are a dozen or more elements that are better about the iPhone. Everything from the big: the App Store versus the Android Market (from the consumer perspective) — to the little: the multi-touch and overall touchscreen responsiveness.
I would think Multi-touch/touch responsiveness has more to do with the devices and not the operating system.
I myself believe that Android will become the dominant OS on phones, because they've got developers on their side. All my hacker friends and developers are really excited to start hacking on android phones (as am I) and not so interested in developing for iPhone. I believe the biggest reason there are a lot of developers (more so companies) that flocked to iOS development is because of the marketplace, the opportunities it brought and that there wasn't any similar device available at that time.
A marketplace for apps will in the end become decentralized and the greatest apps will be for android because the smartest people will want to develop for it. History repeats itself.