I think you got it exactly right. Of course they want to keep having the best native App catalogue, but for those devs who DO decide to go the mobile web app route they don't want to block their users from using it on iOS devices, since this would lower their satisfaction with iOS.

Conversely, they don't support flash because of the poor / non existant mobile hardware support which leads to bad performance and -again- unsatisfied users. With this move they want to force developers to use either html5 or native apps.

You can say lots of things about their app store policies, but their html5 adoption strategy is pretty rock solid and it's good we have a giant of Apple's calibre behind this in order to nudge the ecosystem in that direction.

With their lack of mobile flash plugin support, Apple just made flash executable wrapped apps to be profitable through the app store, I wouldn't go about categorizing Apple's calibre on profit related decisions.

"but for those devs who DO decide to go the mobile web app route they don't want to block their users from using it on iOS devices, since this would lower their satisfaction with iOS." Establishing that they did block a plugin on the browser is a first step. The rest is simply a side effect of js being supported on the browser combined with the flash cold cut, is there some extra benevolance we should thank Apple for when their Canvas implementation is afflicted by the same trouble a flash vm would run into inside a safari mobile browser ?

Also devs go the web app route way in ways apple has no voice in or control over, as much as they try. As it should be. Let us not forget such amazing experiments as the introduction of the quicktime plugin and how that opened the door for things like flash shockwave itself, and we all know how well that went.

Revisionisn and a good nanny brand delivered narrative won't make safari mobile canvas any more apt, sadly. Or a commercial brand any less profit seeking. As it should.