Exactly! General Electric was very much the Apple of the 19th century. Edison's genius was recognizing that he had to create demand for his product. It was not the case of "build it and they will come" - not even with the light bulb! Not only that, but Edison made the light bulb economically viable for everyday use. That's not a small feat! In a similar vein we all know Ford didn't invent the automobile, he was able to mass produce the automobile and make it affordable for everyone. We really need to distinguish between invention and mass production and scaling. Every country likes to claim the former, it was the United States that was really good at the latter - especially from the late 19th to mid 20th centuries.
You could not go an buy a light bulb to put it somewhere where you wanted light. That doesn't mean it didn't exist. It was just not available and the ones that existed probably didn't serve well as a light source. Smartphones however where in stores you could buy them long before Apple made one and they had all the functionality of apples first smartphone.
Edison (and others; it was pretty regional) convinced consumers they wanted lightbulbs, much as Apple convinced consumers they wanted smartphones and Zoom convinced consumers they wanted VC.