Except they almost all existed prior to the iPhone: You can have a complete new feature without changing your phone I had this with Windows Mobile seven years

Except they almost all existed prior to the iPhone: You can have a complete new feature without changing your phone I had this with Windows Mobile seven years ago. Not as frequently as today's phones, but happened -- especially at transition points You don't depend on your carrier in order to buy applications That's a feature phone issue. As I noted before 3rd party app stores have existed for a long time. And for SmartPhones were the dominant way apps were purchased. No crapware (sorry this advantage is available only on non-open devices) If you go back far enough with smartphones they didn't have crapware either. Largely because the carriers hadn't developed any yet. But Apple did get rid of them for the newer generation of smartphones. They opened the mobile development industry to indie and small developers That was also the case with smartphones prior to the iPhone. Look at the apps on PalmOS and Windows Mobile. Most were written by small shops. And because of their deployment models there were a large number of enterprise apps written for them too. In fact in many ways the iPhone introduced Fortune 500 mobile apps. On WinMo and Palm you were a lot less likely to find Disneyland and Walmart apps as you are now with the iPhone.