[stouset]

None of these were more than a blip in the market. Nothing today even remotely resembles these devices, inherits design language from them, or points back in any way to them. They are historical dead ends and nearly irrelevant.

Meanwhile the majority of people on earth own one or multiple devices that are more or less clones of the original iPhone, only faster, larger, thinner, and exponentially more capable.

[gambiting]

Honest question - were you actually an adult using smartphones when the first iPhone came out? Or are you basing your opinion on what you read on the internet?

Because by the time of the iPhone coming out everyone j knew had a Blackberry or some internet connected Nokia slider - the iPhone was significantly less capable than either of those. And yeah, both Nokia and Blackberry screwed the pooch. But again, pretending like smartphones didn't exist or that they were a "blip in the market" is intellectually dishonest, or like I said - based on what you read not based on actual lived experience. Unless you live in the US iPhones were a curiosity for years, a status symbol.

[stouset]

Yes, I was an adult during all of this.

BlackBerrys were popular amongst business users, but there were 85 million of those devices in circulation across the globe at their absolute peak. There are currently 8 billion smartphones worldwide, and virtually all of them are descendants of the iPhone form factor and multitouch input paradigm. BlackBerrys were barely Internet devices as we know them today; they did technically have a browser, but it was minimally functional and they were mostly considered email machines. Unlike the original iPhone, they would be virtually unrecognizable to someone today as equivalent to what we carry around in our pockets.

In less time than it took RIM to develop the BlackBerry and reach 85 million users, Apple took a niche device category and completely transformed it into something that spread to the overwhelming majority of the human population on the planet.

Your position is like saying well actually the modern bicycle was actually invented by whomever created the penny farthing. Yes it had two wheels, yes it existed before the safety bicycle. But they were a novelty until the safety bicycle was invented, and every bicycle in circulation today owes its design to that very first one.