It still took a couple of years, though.
Of course in hindsight its rather obvious. But there were other smartphones and they were (on paper at least) superior in quite a few ways.
I mean was that because of the iPhone as a concept or because it debuted as an exclusive on the worst cell carrier in the United States lol
You had Symbian, Palm, Windows CE devices which had all of that and keyboards. I won't pretend it was 100% obvious to me who was going to win at the time (and I don't think I was unique in that).