MemeStreams | iPhone 5 Awaits Release Date To Reveal Android Counter-Response

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 crowd a long time ago, smartly.

Mainstream geeks: These are the types for whom their geekdom isn’t their religion, it’s just their nature. Many of them acknowledge that the iPhone and iOS are the superior platform; there are simply a few hacking (they dogmatically call it being “open”) elements on Android that they just can’t leave behind. Can Apple give these moderate geek-types just enough geekiness with iOS 5 so as to split the difference, while not geeking things up too much for the non-geek mainstream? We shall see.

Those who live in fear: Someone somewhere claimed that the iPhone 4 had an antenna defect, and so these folks chose to believe it because it was spoken in a confident voice or came from a self-proclaimed authority. Nevermind that millions of iPhone 4 users around the world can confirm that there is no, and never was any, antenna issue; the entire thing was a nasty hoax perpetrated by the hardcore geeks described above. But for those (sheep) who live in fear, hearing about a supposed iPhone 4 antenna issue was enough to scare them off, leading them to stick with their Android platform by default for one more year. With the arrival of the iPhone 5, the antenna issue will go away despite the fact that the hardcore geeks will automatically claim the iPhone 5 to have an antenna issue before it even ships. But consumers won’t fall for it this time, because such hoaxes only tend to work once. The question is whether the geeks will manage to successfully perpetrate a hoax of a different kind for the iPhone 5, and whether Apple will have a more assertive response to such nonsense this time.

Those without a clue: They bought an Android phone because the electronics store salesperson (who nearly always belongs to the “hardcore geeks” group above) told them to. No thought went into it at all. These users have since wondered why their Android phone is clearly not giving them the experience that their iPhone-using friends are getting, but through the fallacy of holding better products to higher standards than worse ones, will only buy an iPhone 5 if they perceive it to be twice as good as their current Android phone. But considering what Apple is up against, that shouldn’t be too difficult to pull off. We’ll find out once it finally sees release date.

iPhone 5 Awaits Release Date To Reveal Android Counter-Response