There’s no denying that Apple has found itself in unfamiliar territory this year, which is to say, on the losing end. Earlier in the year they lost a portion of a factory at their Chinese manufacturer Foxconn due to an explosion (which later brought out stories of horrendous working conditions). Then they lost their long-time, visionary leader when Steve Jobs finally succumbed to a lengthy illness (and their stock dipped accordingly). But they pulled themselves back up to release…not the iPhone 5. Although consumers came out in decent numbers to purchase the iPhone 4S and its Siri (surly? – or at least cynical) software, the truth is that most buyers were hoping for the iPhone 5 and they will hold off on buying a new phone until it hits the market. So yeah, Apple maybe hasn’t had the best year.

But luckily, they don’t have to outshine their own accomplishments in order to be successful; they just have to do better than the competition. And it seems that their competitors have a plan to make it easy for them. Research in Motion (RIM) and their BlackBerry devices (if you can even call them competition) recently experienced a massive service outage (stemming from an issue at a data center in Europe) that left many users wanting to jump ship (or file a class action lawsuit). And then there is Google’s Android platform, which is the only real competitor to the iPhone.

Although Apple fans tend to be pretty die-hard in their devotion to the company, there are a few Android handsets that might turn their heads, if only for the fact that Android makes it easy to do your own thing. You don’t even have to have mad computer skills to crack these devices in order to control your storage, speed, and functionality as well as add non-approved software and apps created by the Android community (jailbreaking iPhones is possible, but much more difficult). This is appealing to a large group of consumers that would like to have access to and control of their smart phones, but it does come with a downside. If the average Joe can hack his own phone, so can anyone else within range of the signal, and security for Android phones is terrible.

Okay, let’s let the cat out of the bag here. Security is bad for all cell phones! Don’t you watch the news? Celebrities are always griping about their phones getting hacked and their nude photos getting stolen (and posted online by the highest bidder). A guy in Florida was just arrested for leaking ScarJo’s bare derriere (and other bits) on the internet, and he apparently hacked about 50 other people, as well. Why? Because he can! Cell phone security is a joke. Unfortunately, it seems that Android phones may be a bit more vulnerable than the rest simply because they have made it so easy for users to “access” their phones. While they still create quality tech, the fact that they’re easy to hack may just give Apple an edge.

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You don’t have to be a whiz kid at a Santa Clara data center to realize what this could mean for Apple. If the so called “Android bomb” ever explodes (hackers are able to sneak in malware that affects a wide range of users), Apple’s stock could get a big vote of confidence. Of course, that’s not likely to happen in this fiscal year, so they’re just going to have to cut their losses. But with iPad sales going strong, iPods still the number one MP3 player on the market, and the iPhone 5 on the horizon, they’re probably not too worried.

Editor’s Note

Thanks to Evan Fischer for this quest post. He is a freelance writer and part-time student at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, California.