After further thought, I'm wrong. I think the way this will actually play out is a little different.

When Loopt had this problem, we had to support all the broken devices, or the carrier wouldn't put us on deck at all. Now it's possible to just not offer (or even pull) the app on broken or non-standard devices. No bad reviews, less extra pain. Testing and feedback monitoring would still be required, but not fixing or hunting for work-arounds.

Then the burden would fall on device manufacturers (slowly -- consumer behavior would need to change). Consumers would stop buying phones that didn't have any apps.

I'm curious now to see what happens, and much less confident in my ability to predict the outcome. No matter how you look at it this is good news, and the result could be interesting and new.