The entire mobile industry pre-iPhone?

This is and endless argument, you either acknowledge that they pushed it forward or you don't but there wasn't a significant application platform, touch was nearly nonexistent and even dismissed by RIM, and while many of these things might be dismissed as obvious, Apple made it stick and they beat the entire current crop of competitors to the market.

Everything is easy once you've seen it done...

Take the typical Nokia and Motorola device from 1997 and the typical one from the iPhone launch, biggest improvements? More SMS and the phones got a little bit smaller