Do you think that was only because those devices lacked a capacitive touchscreen? If so, then why did every other company have to scratch their mobile platform after the iPhone came along? Why didn't Microsoft make Metro in 2006, after all, the techology was available (I tried a Panasonic Toughbook with a capacitive display way before that).
I agree that others should be credited for their inventions. Both RIM and others like Nokia helped pushed the technology forward, but they did so very gradually. It took an outsider to disrupt the industry (luckily, Apple had killed off the Newton, or they probably woudn't have had the incentive to do so).
Besides everything being touch based, which was really disruptive, I believe a real disruption in the iPhone was that it included a full browser and not the mobile crap that existed back then, apps were good, but it was something that existed in other smartphones although without the centralized distribution medium, but they did exist.
Now some people are saying that Apple reign will not last just because smartphone prices will follow the same path that feature phones prices walked in the last 10 years, they will become much cheaper than now, I do not know about Apple remaining the leader or not but I do believe that smartphone prices will be really cheap in 2020, even for developing nations.
EDIT: typo and correction in the last paragraph.
For those right choices Apple has yielded incredible riches: Profits never before seen, quarter after quarter. They're a half-a-trillion dollar company.
All I argue about is this revisionist history that acts, essentially, like Apple is entitled to everything. That they borrowed nothing and created everything. It seems like I'm arguing against a strawman there, but it is too common of an opinion. It is an argument that is based upon taking the smallest trivia of Apple's implementation and making it the most profound, important thing ever, while everything else doesn't matter.
History of their company in making such products automatically creates a media hype around the products. Its like so long as products are not very bad, they are always good. And assumed to be so! They have done a lot of work to make that happen and deserve it too.
Don't forget that iPhone and iPad got the push because iPod generation of devices did a very good job convincing common folks that handheld devices can be usable. Again apple needs to be credited for this.
Android can be told to have copied iPhone's trend. Not as a product.
As you said others have done a better job building ecosystem to ensure such an innovation happens.
And isn't the iPaq v1.0 just the Newton v2.0?
Years before the iPhone I was carrying around an iPaq. Now it isn't quite the same, most notably because the original device didn't even function as a phone. Yet I would argue that the phone part of smartphone is by far the least important part (and the only reason it is so prevalent is that carrier subsidization allows people to stomach $700 iPhones). Really these things are ultra-portable computers and the phone thing is ancillary.
The iPaq wasn't multitouch. But here's the thing -- Apple bought that multitouch sensor. They didn't invent it. They didn't specify it. They didn't even initiate its creation. Their software used it brilliantly, but by the common narrative you'd think they had invented it.
Capacitive touchscreens evolved. Embedded processors evolved. GPUs evolved. Wireless technologies evolved. Batteries evolved. Makers like RIM pushed much of that evolution.
Apple stepped in at the perfect confluence of technologies and made the iPaq v2.0. Better in every way -- largely owing to those hardware improvements, all of which came from outside Apple -- but did it really invent an industry?
It's actually a bit sad how little credit RIM gets, given that they were the ones who pushed a lot of the innovation in mobile that made the iPhone possible. A distributed messaging, application platform, camera, etc...everyone just focuses on the damn keyboard as if it defines the platform.
Already I'm seeing many ascribing the iPad as inventing the tablet, forgetting so many products that came before (both real, such as Archos, and conceptual like the Crunchpad). Apple executes amazingly well, but their creations are seldom as out of left field as people imagine. They say that the victors write history, but it is sad if we're blinded into confusing commercial success with innovation.