I had a thought today during my lunch break that I couldn't fit into a tweet. Two coworkers just bought their first iPhone, the iPhone 4S on sprint. Both of them over the last few years have asked many times when the iPhone would finally be on sprint so when it was announced they jumped on the opportunity to buy one. Both previously had Android phones because that was the best available on the carrier they wanted to use until now. What is interesting to me is not that they moved from an android device to an iPhone, but how much influence using the iPhone had on them.

From 2007 to early this year AT&T was their only choice and they didn't want to go through the trouble or expense of switching carriers. The addition of Verizon this February also had no impact on their decision. They routinely quipped how they would deal with an inferior device to keep their cheaper monthly bill.

After less than a week with the phone both longtime sprint customers returned their iPhone 4Ss to sprint and canceled their contract to move to AT&T. The slower data performance on the Sprint network never bothered them on their Android smart phones but, in only a week the same network impacted their usage of the iPhone so much that made a decision they refused to do for two or three years. That's the power of the iPhone.