You're completely discounting quality of execution, which in this case is everything. It's the whole ballgame.
I had friends who were Palm Treo die-hards, and they dropped them unceremoniously in 2008 when they used an iPhone for the first time. They were already used to carrying around a phone that could do email and access the internet. But the qualitative jump to the iPhone was so big that it upended the industry and became quite literally the most successful consumer product of all time. If you can't see how that's different from Palm, I don't know what to tell you.
> You're completely discounting quality of execution, which in this case is everything. It's the whole ballgame.
Yes, the iPhone excelled on so many levels, from the hardware level sleek design, screen (game changer really - high resolution color, with multi-point touch support), camera, but also all of the individual functionalities. This wasn't an incremental advance or a case of adding one or two new capabilities to what a Palm could do - this was next-level across the board.
The design of iOS, including the gesture/touch based UI, and level of performance was also key, and it took Android a LONG time to catch up. Microsoft made a misguided attempt with Windows Phone, and others like Nokia and Palm were just left in the dust. We did get Qt from Nokia as a side effect, which was a plus!
I had friends who were Palm Treo die-hards, and they dropped them unceremoniously in 2008 when they used an iPhone for the first time. They were already used to carrying around a phone that could do email and access the internet. But the qualitative jump to the iPhone was so big that it upended the industry and became quite literally the most successful consumer product of all time. If you can't see how that's different from Palm, I don't know what to tell you.