I assume you're being down-voted because you are comparing the price of a contract-free phone with that of a contract phone (but excluding the cost of the contract).
A quick look at the AT&T website suggest that to get that $49 iPhone, you need to sign up for at least $55 of services per month for 24 months, which comes to $1369 total.
Sure, there are probably deals to be had, but you'll never get it down far enough to even pretend to compete with a $80 phone and $0-20/month off-contract minutes.
Agree on you about the battery life, but I'm not sure about apps since I have never used an Iphone but ios is more mature so it had some head start so I guess its apps are also a bit ahead.
The cheapest Iphone here in kenya is about 450 USdollars compare that with the ideos at 80 dollars. With such a gap battery life ceases been an important issue for most kenyans.
all i'm saying is it would be nice if these users can at least have a great first-time user experience without having to worry about their phones crashing , running out of battery within 30 min. of use, or getting malware and trojans on their Android phones.
Not to diss Android, but iOS devices have better apps, better battery life, etc.