iPad halo effect brightens iPhone prospects | Phones | iPhone Central | Macworld

> “The big thing is that people with an iPhone really don’t look anywhere else,” said Entner, for their next smartphone. “It’s like having the most beautiful woman in the world on your arm. Why would you look anywhere else?” This is the big reason why I think that despite Android’s obvious growth this past year, a future where Android “dominates” the market, and the iPhone is relegated to the fringes is highly unlikely.

To date, Android has yet to demonstrate any ability to lure customers away from the iPhone. All of Android’s growth has been at the expense of Microsoft, Symbian, and RIM. The big recent quarter that everyone likes to talk about where Android “outsold the iPhone” was the quarter just BEFORE Apple released the iPhone 4, and even in that quarter, Android just BARELY outsold the iPhone, despite several new models on all four carriers being made available during that quarter.

The only two things holding Apple back from growing even faster than it already has is exclusivity to one carrier in many parts of the world and the inability to make the iPhone 4 fast enough. Once the manufacturing speed catches up to demand, and once we see the iPhone on other carriers (yes, even Verizon eventually), Android will hit the wall, in terms of how much faster it can grow. it will run out of easy prey and have to start making gains on merit.

Anyone can take a sale from Windows mobile at this point. That’s no reason to cook up delusions of grandeur.

Momentum is a good thing. But for the long term, killing the iPhone will be a lot harder than a lot of people think. With the iPad having no competition at all, more and more people are going to be investing in the iOS app garden. And once they’re in there, it’s not going to be easy to get them back out.