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Apple still has time, but in dwindling quantity, to reclaim 2011 for itself and turn this into the year of the iPhone 5 after all. The clock ticks, the release date slips, consumers gripe at having to wait longer than they’d hoped, and it’s still not clear when that cycle will end in the form of an iPhone 5 launch. In the meantime, in terms of sales, 2011 has been the year of the Android phone. That’s shocking, however, considering that most Android users will admit they’d rather have an iPhone and/or that they believe the iPhone to be the better platform. With the iPhone 5, Apple finds itself in the position of theoretically being able to bring many or most of these current Android users into the iPhone camp, yet faces a bar set high by the expectations which come with any new Apple product. Here’s a breakdown of the various types of Android users, and what Apple must to in order to win them over with the iPhone 5.

iPhone lovers on Verizon: When the iPhone launched in 2007, they shrugged and said “I’ll take one of those when it comes to Verizon.” Then the Verizon iPhone 4 arrived earlier this year and most of them decided to wait for the Verizon iPhone 5 because either they didn’t want the aging iPhone 4 by then, or in more cases, they weren’t yet upgrade eligible and decided that it wasn’t worth an extra $200 or $250 above sticker price. These folks are pretty much automatic for the iPhone 5 when it sees release date or when they’re upgrade eligible, whichever comes second.

Sprint and T-Mobile holdouts: The iPhone 5 should be available on T-Mobile if and when the AT&T merger becomes real. Seeing a Sprint iPhone is more of an open ended question mark. Short of that, the question for users of those carriers who wish they had an iPhone is whether they’ll be willing to move to a Verizon iPhone 5 after years of refusing to move to AT&T to get the iPhone.

Hardcore geeks: These are the kind of technology geeks who don’t want to own a device unless they can physically take it apart for the sake of putting it back together again, and can hack its software system into becoming less of a functional product and more of a pet project. These types hate the iPhone, generally hate everything Apple does, and will hate the iPhone 5 once it arrives. After all, Apple’s products are aimed squarely at consumers, at the expense of what the hardcore geeks want. Apple gave up on this c... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]