Hi David,
Even when disregarding the implications that using this would have on the size of the base install, doesn't konqy still have problems with some CSS stuff, and other details.
Quite possibly but Firefox (which I do use on a much more regular basis then Konqueror by the way) also isn't fully mature yet, and people are already proposing to make that the default browser. If issues are an issue we could probably stop shipping a significant part of the included apps, including quite a few Gnome apps and libraries.
Leonard.