What is driving the design of today’s smartphone and tablet applications [on hold]

As devices have moved away from the traditional windows environments found in Microsoft, Apple and linux/unix type products, the paradigms have become far more fast and loose. Skeuomorphism was in vogue for a while but this too has fallen by the wayside somewhat giving way to a more minimal unintrusive interface to maximise media content and consume gestures.

Clearly there will always be room for the more maverick approaches to push the envelope, but what is driving the design of these new application interfaces? Is it simply reusing what works from the more popular applications or are there more subtle design idea at play?