"The only mistake they made was aligning themselves with exclusive carriers"
it had its pros and cons, it worked well for them, as a experiment to see how the product reacted to a small market, when it was good for most users it became available on more carriers subsidized, something natural
"Now, Android users see Android phones as good enough and don't care their hardware is inferior"
the specs of any of the recent phones released by motorola, sony, samsung and other companies easily surpasses the quality and power of iphone 5 in most aspects, that is why smasung galaxy SIII is doing that well
"they're exposed to virus/malware/trojans, or that their apps are mostly inferior. Heck"
if you say that ios apps are better than apple apps, i think you are wrong, i run the same apps in my android that i used to test in any iphone i used, if it is the same app, why would it be inferior
now, having virus, on linux, that is still a problem, even with root privileges, what you see is scams and annoying publicity and similar crap that has been available to apple in the past but perhaps better handled by them thanks to their extremely closed model that determines what is on their market and what not, something that doesn't work for everybody
"Heck, even Google's own apps look better in iOS, with the exception of Google Maps because of the missing navigation."
don't make me remember those weird results from apple maps, i still laugh at that burger king on a giant church or the map floating over the sea
the difference between a iphone and a android is mostly design and price
i prefer a xperia to a iphone, i know that i can fix the xperia if it breaks, while i can't fix the iphone because apple doesn't sell parts and the ones available made by other companies are not good enough to be considered
there is more to consider than some facts, it is a ecosystem and the iphone one has really big problems that can't/won't be fixed because are part of the product and the whole concept of the phone