Japan LITERALLY [could have] HAD smartphones before smartphones: The Nintendo DS and the PlayStation Portable! IF ONLY they had phone functionality! Or better internet support and messaging/social apps out of the box.
Millions of people all over the world had a DS or PSP. If only they could have also used them as phones…
WHY WHY WHY
The innovation of the iPhone was the capacitive touch screen (a Japanese invention) coupled with an OS that was very easy to use (no manual reading required). And of course Apple's marketing genius.
N900i and P900i(2004) were running XFree86 on Linux. NTT Docomo was moving Linux based phones in orders of 10m for couple years on half a dozen model by the time iPhone launched.
But there were waaaay too many stakeholders with little focus on customer facing values and too much obsession with self punishment involved in those businesses. Using OpenGL for UI was considered irresponsible, indulgent, lustful, lacking in restraint, associated with those kinds of emotions. That and Apple's relentless anticompetitive pursuit burned down Japanese phone industry into ashes.
What was missing was user interface, and the environment that would allow user interface software to develop without getting shut down as a gross offense to the whole society.
Nowadays it wouldn't be so controversial to put a dialer in PSP OS. Back then it was so obviously blasphemous that it would have kept me as a kid awake during nights. How on Earth have life in Japan gotten so simple and reasonable and streamlined these days? Hardly anyone on social media is complaining about highly nuanced local district stitching pattern requirements for kids' school desk wipes anymore.