Perhaps I'm wrong, but I do think ease of use will be more of a selling point then power and capability.
I think you're wrong, but not because the tradeoff will be "ease of use" vs. "power and capability". Power and capability are coming to mobile devices, both from Apple and from the market at large, and people will use that power and capability. It won't matter whether you ("you" being a placeholder for pretty much everybody in the developed world) think you need more apps running on your phone--you will have them, and you will like them, and you will use them more and more in place of your desktop or laptop machine. This is the way it will be in a couple years time, and you can quote me on that.
You're coming to the conclusions you are (that the iPhone will somehow become the leading mobile device--note that I didn't say it would maintain a leadership position, because it has never had a leadership position...it has 25% of the smart phone market, but that's a small niche of the whole mobile market) because you're framing the question wrong.
You're assuming there are huge tradeoffs: Ease of use with the apps that Apple says you can have vs. hard to use, ugly, but with super jet powered applications that allow you to rule the world while sitting on the toilet. The reality will be more like how the PC industry shook out (I'm pretty darned sure, anyway): Good enough ease of use, good enough products, nice enough looking, and dramatically cheaper and more powerful than the Apple counterpart.
When every phone is a smart phone, the smart phone market will look dramatically different than it does today. It'll look a lot more like the regular mobile phone market (which is to say, a hodgepodge of products from a hodgepodge of manufacturers--but Android has a good chance at being a leading OS on those products).
I think you're wrong, but not because the tradeoff will be "ease of use" vs. "power and capability". Power and capability are coming to mobile devices, both from Apple and from the market at large, and people will use that power and capability. It won't matter whether you ("you" being a placeholder for pretty much everybody in the developed world) think you need more apps running on your phone--you will have them, and you will like them, and you will use them more and more in place of your desktop or laptop machine. This is the way it will be in a couple years time, and you can quote me on that.
You're coming to the conclusions you are (that the iPhone will somehow become the leading mobile device--note that I didn't say it would maintain a leadership position, because it has never had a leadership position...it has 25% of the smart phone market, but that's a small niche of the whole mobile market) because you're framing the question wrong.
You're assuming there are huge tradeoffs: Ease of use with the apps that Apple says you can have vs. hard to use, ugly, but with super jet powered applications that allow you to rule the world while sitting on the toilet. The reality will be more like how the PC industry shook out (I'm pretty darned sure, anyway): Good enough ease of use, good enough products, nice enough looking, and dramatically cheaper and more powerful than the Apple counterpart.
When every phone is a smart phone, the smart phone market will look dramatically different than it does today. It'll look a lot more like the regular mobile phone market (which is to say, a hodgepodge of products from a hodgepodge of manufacturers--but Android has a good chance at being a leading OS on those products).