Not implying incompetence in my original post ...
I was referring to the accusation in your original subject line
"they just don't get it",
your plea in the original post for
"A little R&D in the compact normal zoom lens area please"
and your subsequent claim that
"I would think one could design a lens sacrificing distortion for smaller size then remove the distortion in camera?"
All of these suggest that you believe that the lenses that you (and I!) want are feasible, and are not available mainly due to lack of R&D effort and/or misjudgment of what customers want, which is what I meant by "incompetence".
I am suggesting instead that a number of camera makers do "get it" and are striving to produce standard zoom lenses with various balances between speed and compactness, but that there are technical limits at work. Given the inevitable size/speed trade-offs, it is good that at least we are starting to see options like f/2.8-4 in addition to f/3.5-5.6 in "APS-C" format, although still the only way to get different size/speed choices for standard zooms in a single system is with Micro Four Thirds.
P. S. Whatever happened to intermediate speed/size/cost options like the f/2.8-3.5 4x zooms and f/2.8-4 5x zoom offered for Four Thirds SLR's? Such designs should even be easier once free of the SLR mirror.