That said, their success (over something like node-webkit + react) will definitely depend on how well they match and integrate the native APIs.
"The virtual dom is an implementation detail of React.js. React Native demonstrates that many rendering contexts are possible."
This was kind of the exciting point all along :). DOM just happens to be the output of a function that people are most interested in at the moment. but people have been talking about using it with canvas and other stuff, too. It's a generally-useful way to map functional data to render-trees.