I don’t recall everyone wanting this, although a decent number certainly did. But Apple most certainly did skimp on performance. The cell modem in the original iPhone was vastly inferior to its competitors. (The latest Blackberry had many flaws, but its ability to connect to the network under less than ideal conditions was far, far beyond the iPhone.)

The iPhone had an excellent web browser, a novel form factor, and fun first-party apps. And, notably, no one else had a web browser that was even decent.

I did misremember the popularity of Nokia smartphones, which were more popular than I recall (looked it up here: https://www.statista.com/statistics/271539/worldwide-shipmen...). But they were, spec-wise, more powerful than the original iPhone (which also didn't support 3G). Also, the year was 2007 rather than 2008. 2008 was when the App Store launched.

For all we know, there may also be insane demand for good VR once people see what good VR looks like.

I dunno, Cingular was charging $15 for 5 megabytes of data in 2006. I remember nobody wanting web stuff on their phones because it was expensive. Apple had to cut a deal with Cingular for unlimited data to sell iPhones.