I think the point of Strida is SIMPLICITY, and the design aims to be pure, clean, simple and Iconic. There are plenty of bikes with zillions of gears - but its interesting the fixie urban movement is also going simple 1 speed. I beg to differ about dyson products: yes they are highly innovative, and extremely well marketed, but the design style - with all the innards out on display - is not to everyone’s taste - like seeing all your intestines and ugly bits on the outside of the human form 
2 speed locally made Shlumpf geared Strida’s are also slowly coming to market from Ming - they work out cheaper than buying a Strida and then adding the gear. But the gear upgrade direct from Shlumpf will be super quality swiss engineering… I guess give them all time to get these to market - manufacturing, shipping and distribution is not as instant as the internet.
I saw a pic of a folding Saddle on a Strida …sorry cant find: I think it was on a picture from Taipei show a couple of years ago: The seat folded down to be parallel with the tubes: yes it did make the bike slimmer at the top, but also more complicated - with big safety issues: if not locked could drop the rider and lots of finger traps.
The idea of setting the wheels apart when folded is interesting - But I have no problems with the stability of my folded Strida. The best tip (from this forum I think) is to roll the bike as vertically as possible - with most weight through the wheels, not the arms, this means hold by stem with a bent arm, Or: hold by the front of the saddle. I think, Having the 2 wheels together makes the folded Strida more easy to manoeuvre - in fact just like the Dyson Ball vacuum - we’ve all seen the adverts for, steering around furniture etc.