That's really strange. The US Patent Office would strongly disagree with you. apple receives upwards of a DOZEN patents weekly. Included in those were patents on the multitouch screen used all smart phones today. Yes, they did not invent the "touchscreen" but, if you look back, you will find they did indeed invent the palm held computer with touch screen capability, called the "personal digital assistant" and in fact coined the name PDA with the Newton, which is the underlying base of the smartphone... And there were Newtons with phone capabilities... Invented by Apple! The Newton was in development before 1990. . . And patented by Apple. Apple has thousands of patents: legitimate patents for real inventions that they have spent billions of dollars developing or purchasing. As for the iPhone, there were smartphones before the iPhone, and there are smartphones after the iPhone. . . and there is a WORLD of differences between the designs and if you can't see the differences you are being deliberately obtuse!
Just because they receive patents on things doesn’t mean they invented the smartphone. Or the GUI OS. Or the PDA (Psion 1984). They might be the first to add widget X to gadget Y, but both the widget and the gadget already existed. Usually what they are is the first one to make gadget Y popular and profitable.
I didn’t say there wasn’t a difference in design, don’t lie about what I said, I simply pointed out that smartphones existed at least a decade before the iPhone so saying Apple invented the market is simply, oh lets use your words, deliberately obtuse.