@Mark - chillax bro
"Well that's the thing - the people who are obsessed with phones seem to brag about their expensive Iphones. The majority of people who buy and use phones, without getting fanatical about it, are still buying plenty from Nokia."
You've missed the point. I'll make some presumptions here and suggest you're a tech-savvy pragmatist, who assesses device capabilities in the round before purchasing.
Most people aren't. The entire tech industry (mobiles in particular) has been surrounding itself in a cloak of buzzword shit-bingo for the last few years, especially as mobiles got powerful enough to run "true" OSs with downloadable executable content, cameras etc.
I've been using smartphones since P910, and I used to make those assessments. When I decided to finally upgrade from the P990 (which lasted 2.5 yrs before the keys on the flip failed, and I got bored of trying to use the UI to dial - it still works fine BTW) I took a long look at the smartphones which were about (this was ~2yrs ago).
- Symbian UIQ - _just_ dead (pity) - the P1i was available, but didn't look like it was a huge step-up.
- Symbian S60 - I've always _always_ hated it, ever since I tried the first Nokia ulgiphone containing it. Personal preference? Impenetrable UI, excessive context menus. Yuk.
- iOS - this was still getting core functionality online, and worth watching
- Android - ditto as per iOS (was looking at the early HTCs, post-G1)
I watched for a while, and when iOS got the voice-dialling over bluetooth first I went for it.
Coming from a phone of 2.5 years UIQ age to iOS was startling - within a month I genuinely didn't care about what was missing (apart from delivery reports on SMSs!).
NOW - to get back to the point - don't presume people "brag" about their iphones, and likewise don't presume that people who don't brag about their phones are using Nokia (or a majority of them are).
- The "posted by iPhone" effect is because people are generally lazy and don't change the setting, or it's not possible to change it (e.g. Facebook)
- iPhones have a marketing engine behind them which is far slicker and bigger than Nokia ever managed, with their impenetrable (spotting a pattern?) gobbledegook adverts and strategies - so you're going to "see" apple a lot more
And, if I might be so bold without wishing to cause big offence, you do come off as having a chip on your shoulder about the public buying what marketeers tell them to.
You can't sit on an island and shout about how stupid people are for buying a good product because they've been told to - and don't discount the idea (however unpalatable) that the iPhone is in fact a good product. Maybe it sells itself between friends as well - the "stickiness" (read "tipping point", a great book on social trends) of the user experience is undeniable.
Just keeping it real... chill out.