I may be skewed slightly because in Australia, Apple/iOS is overwhelmingly popular and is part of why we get first run of nearly every product even when the rest of that run is mostly only the USA.

But phone plans made otherwise expensive devices very affordable to even the average consumer, because the payments are deferred. That is also a model that was quite popular here in Australia before the iPhone, but I believe was a bit less common in the USA before the iPhone launch based on some other articles I read about that model basically being genius for launching the iPhone.