But it was clear what the iPhone was adding. Capacitive multitouch, big screen, desktop browser on mobile, etc...

That wasn’t clear at all. None of that was public before they launched. And when they did launch the entire industry was saying “touchscreens suck, who cares about desktop browser pages aren’t designed for that, we have WAP for that!”

So no, it wasn’t clear for any outsiders that he iPhone was even going to be a success. And like plenty times before people where predicting the death of Apple due to their stupidity of going into a different market.

It's not clear what they're adding that iOS or Android doesn't already have -- something we could have said just before Windows Phone 7 arrived.