In short, the mobile web needs better tools, better standards, and better browsers

Agreed.

and it needs them fast, before the only technologies that matter are the ones controlled by the gatekeepers.

This is what I don't understand. Why is there a time limit? Why wouldn't we expect things to play out in mobile just as they did on the desktop, with web apps moving from nonexistent to peripheral to ubiquitous over many years? Web developers were able to work around the limitations of Internet Explorer -- not without pain and suffering, but well enough. So why wouldn't we expect them to work around the limitations of mobile browsers?