IMHO, even though the OG iPhone lacked MMS, 3G, GPS, and even copy / paste, the web browsing, gestures, and software fit and finish were game changers that everyone scrambled to catch up with. Ditto with the App Store. iOS had an App marketplace that was pretty damn big by the time that Android phones started shipping.

IMHO, it wasn’t just marketing. There were compelling software features that made iOS something people wanted during 2007-2011

But back to the original point, the Zune kind of released right when everyone was migrating their music collections to smart phones. It was a terribly timed product.

And ironically, a lot of ground breaking touch screen work was being done in MS labs at the time. I remember seeing a lot of that demoed at conferences and in CS journals. If they had the foresight to apply that tech to their phones, the iPhone would’ve never taken off.