My gut feeling on iOS vs Symbian (running on similar hardware) is that if it's so easy to copy something like that, then iOS is only being propped up by the law anyway. It's probably not doing society much good overall.
Maybe a route forward is to allow competition, but require that if hardware is licensed by something like the GPL, then some nominal fee would have to be paid to the rights holder. Society would have to vote on what that should be, and it would be across the board, perhaps 5% to 25%, something on the level of capital gains or VAT? It would be kind of like generic drugs, where other companies would have a hard time competing because typical profits margins might be in the 15% range, so they couldn’t afford to advertise. Otherwise my feeling now is that we’re actively encouraging monopolies and it just feels really anti-entrepreneurial.
Also, if iPhone's form factor is actually better, then it would only benefit customers if other companies would adopt it.
Some things are hard to copy though and would take time to reproduce by others (if ever).
And how do you know it would result in a net loss for consumers? I guess by assuming that iPhone's form factor would not get invented, if others were allowed to copy it. But how do you know that it wouldn't? And what about all the other things that would get invented, because people were allowed to reverse engineer stuff or develop other, currently patent protected technologies?