Not quite. Scott Forstall gave the explanation - before he was fired! - in an interview:
"We design the keynotes so that the big reveal of the product happens around 40 minutes into the presentation. When the big image of the product appears on screen, we want the time shown to be close to the actual time on the audience's watches. But we know we won't hit 40 minutes exactly."
The iPhone was announced at 9:42
Ahh, that's actually an even more clever way to do it!
I just assumed 9:41 because I remember it was around that time anyways.