> But it had a touch screen that felt nice, and you could watch videos and play music! The web browser actually performed well despite the low bandwidth.

Basically an observation that consumers were interested in digital media players, which Apple had some expertise in building (iPods, for younger folks).

And that a usable browser was a killer feature (most of the web not having reactive mobile sites, and no apps, then).

And if you combined all of the above with a cell phone, customers would rather carry 1 device than the 3 it previously took.

> iPhone had little going for it technically. No GPS, poor data bandwidth, no apps, and minimal ability to make phone calls.

Things that apparently were not that important at launch. Apple did negotiate "unlimited" data plans with Cingular/AT&T.

> But it had a touch screen that felt nice, and you could watch videos and play music! The web browser actually performed well despite the low bandwidth

Better UI, better media playback, web browser that worked. Sounds like a classic example of Apple taking what is out there and simply doing it better.

>Steve Ballmer was terrible at marketing.

you could have just shortened that to "Steve Ballmer was terrible" and been more accurate.

Windows Phone (as opposed to Windows Mobile, which was basically moribund at the time the iPhone came out, and was replaced with the incompatible Windows Phone) wasn’t competing with the original iPhone; it came out shortly after the iPhone 4.

IMO the real problem with Windows Phone was the complete failure to produce an actual platform. Windows Phone 7 was incompatible with Windows Mobile, and _Windows Phone 8 was largely incompatible with Windows Phone 7_! The whole thing was comically developer hostile.

(Second mistake; Windows Phone 7’s UI ran at 30fps, presumably in an attempt to save battery. This made it feel a lot worse than iOS and Android.)