Apple is just one manufacturer, and there are lots of people who can't stand apple. With android you could at least get your Motorola, Sony-Ericsson or whatever you used to have. At the time Android was practically the only viable choice for iphone, so there you go. Pricing also wasn't irrelevant - if apple had released a low cost model early in game, Android would have been dramatically slowed down.

And Nokia messed up maemo/meego big time, by not diverting enough resources to it, until it was at least 5 years too late.