this sounds close to: gosh, if they hadn't basically created the market for phones like this it's hard to see how they would be dominating the market for phone

this sounds close to: gosh, if they hadn't basically created the market for phones like this it's hard to see how they would be dominating the market for phones like this, given their behavior. because that's what first mover advantage is in this case. They created a market, in hardware - that's pretty difficult. regarding other posts saying Apple wasn't first mover in smartphones: Hey, I remember what those old things looked like. There was such a qualitative difference between the iPhone and its competitors at the time that it seemed like a whole new category of product.