The rest of your post is great, but just one quibble: > If Apple hadn't been an AT&T exclusive in the US and had adapted to the way people bought phones indepe

The rest of your post is great, but just one quibble: > If Apple hadn't been an AT&T exclusive in the US and had adapted to the way people bought phones independent of carriers in most of the world That made be true, but if Apple hadn't been an AT&T exclusive I'm not sure if they would've succeeded as quickly as they did. Back then, the carriers had immense power, and they could control the entire phone experience. Apple made a tradeoff with AT&T - we'll be exclusive on your network if you let us control the phone experience. They initially wanted Verizon, but they rejected that trade. AT&T agreed to have a leg up on Verizon, and it mostly worked.