Didn’t the iPod lead the way for the iPhone?
Not exactly, Apple was working on a tablet. . . and had their previous experience with the Newton and its patents. They had the iPod music player concept. . . and got sidetracked on their way to the Tablet by combining the Tablet, the iPod, the Newton PDA concept, with a multi-touch-screen mixed with a subset of OS X's UNIX, and a phone and came up with the iPhone before switching back onto the mainline of the Tablet.