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> As a result, everyone else had to sell... some kind of earbuds and charger. These didn't have to be good, but they did have to be in the box.

Are you implying that before the iPhone nobody sold chargers or earbuds with the phone? If so, you are massively wrong. Source: tech journalist, pre-iPhone, reviewed hundreds of phones.

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At that point in time most chargers were proprietary though. These days, you’ll be hard-pressed to find an AC adapter for a phone that doesn’t just have either a USB-A or USB-C port, and the cable you’ll need is almost certainly the same one that you used for your last phone. Neither were typically the case pre-smartphone.

And the reason for that was not Apple's will, it was EU legislation.

I think mini and micro USB were pretty common when the iPhone debuted but maybe I only higher end phones. You probably got a lot of trash chargers though, like an AC wart hardwired to a uUSB plug or some mini USB to DC barrel jack adapter abomination.

On higher-end phones yes; I had a BlackBerry at the time which I believe had mini-USB. Most of my friends had feature phones at that point in time though, and those were notoriously nonstandard.

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