Because the US sucked for mobile phones until Apple beat the providers into submission. The rest of the world used Nokia or Sony Ericsson smartphones that had multitasking, apps, web browsers and any other definition of a smartphone.
That's not counting Palm, Windows Mobile and others.
Palm had it's stylus and simplified hand writing recognition, which was also a very different approach.
The comment said "invented the modern slab-of-glass smartphone industry".
That's it, that's true, there was no "slab-of-glass" smartphone industry. The comment did not say "invented the smartphone industry" — all comments after it are just unrelated.
Yes there was there were smartphones 10 years prior. No they were not slabs of glass.
If you're alluding to the LG Prada, it didn't have multitouch — no pinch zooming, no flick scrolling, etc.
It could handle two fingers, as long as one of them stayed in place and only the other one moved. That’s how it implemented something kinda like pinch zooming and scrolling. Android in fact copied the same method for its early touchscreen devices and supported it until relatively recently.
The US didn't get the penetration the rest of the world had by Nokia and others so you folks had a raw deal and shitty carrier-neutered phones until Apple came along.
(also I think you once helped me recover my reddit account over IRC like 10 years ago so thanks if that was you)