Problem is that when a newbie searches for "how to query mysql in php", they get 100 different tutorials doing it 100 different ways using the core functions. You won't find one using ZF unless you look for it. By the time a newbie is done digesting a mountain of tutorials, they realize that they need a framework, and they either build one of their own or turn to a 3rd party one. (And ZF doesn't seem to be the most popular one either, outside of the corporate environment.)

Having a clean object library in the core would go a long way towards eliminating the very need for a framework like Zend, and give newbies a place to go for guaranteed development and documentation instead of being at the whim of a framework developer.