I disagree.
Smartphones were growing in leaps and bounds. Both Blackberry & Microsoft were the main suppliers to AT&T, Verizon, etc.
The phones were becoming mini-computers, but the OS and processors were not capable of handling it.
Apple jumped in with simplified hardware and a simple, but robust OS and exploded onto the market.
The market existed.....Apple commoditized it well through simplicity.
iPhones never really brought out features that could not be found elsewhere.
Their popularity also drove the Apps market for them.
Now that processors and hardware have advanced, smartphones are becoming nearly as powerful as PCs....which is why you see Microsoft trying to leap ahead with a unified OS (Windows 10) that covers PC, Tablet, Laptop, Phone and Game Station (Xbox), giving users a familiar feel and experience among all their devices as well as seamless synchronization among their devices.
What Windows hopes is that you can see all your files, emails, etc on any device...including your Xbox.
Additionally, games could be played across devices.
Microsoft is betting on convergence.
“Smartphones were growing in leaps and bounds. Both Blackberry & Microsoft were the main suppliers to AT&T, Verizon, etc.”
You may be confusing feature phones with smart phones. Feature phones had similar capabilities but were hardware centric which limited expanding their capabilities. Smart phones were built to support an OS which could be expanded by adding apps.
The earlier smart phones used Windows CE and Palm operating systems. They were failures. So yes, smart phones existed, but the market did not because no one took the time to figure out what people would want until Steve Jobs.
Then Google jumped in. No one else has made a dent in the market including RIM (Blackberry), Microsoft, Palm, Amazon, and Mozilla.
While I prefer Android over iPhone, I credit Jobs and Apple with the marketing needed to give this sector momentum. Either Palm or RIM COULD have done it, but they did not. I think Microsoft never had a chance.
My 2 cents.