> There are no alternatives if you want to distribute on the most popular mobile platform.

Symbian, Blackberry and Android don't support Objective-C as far as I know. Only iOS does, which is far from the "most popular" mobile platform, especially if you look outside Silicon Valley just for a minute.

[Edit] Also, for the record, you can program in C++ and distribute on iOS with minimal Objective C. I thought I'd point this out given my login name.