[squiffsquiff]

Apple did NOT create the smartphone. When the iPhone released in 2007 it was a feature phone- no app store and famously missing featured like copy and paste. Besides Palm who you have mentioned there was Symbian and Windows Mobile which each had third party after market apps available.

[evanelias]

Indeed Apple did not invent the concept of the smartphone. But by all accounts the first iPhone was absolutely considered a smartphone, based on its superior hardware, advanced operating system, and fully-functional web browser.

You seem to be equating "smartphone" with "has third party apps", but that isn't the defining characteristic of "smartphone" based on any common usage.

Besides, when the iOS App Store was launched ~1 year later, the original iPhone was able to use it.

[squiffsquiff]

I had a Nokia n95 at the time. It also had superior hardware and a fully functional web browser. Yes the iPhone was attractive at the time but not initially a smartphone and certainly not the first

[jitl]

Apple & Android took the smartphone from something that belonged in a businessman’s belt holster to something that lives in the pocket of every person on the planet who can afford it, from niche to ubiquity. For sure they did not invent “phone with store”, but they did create or strongly participate in a complete change of the market that left the earlier players - Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Nokia, etc buried six feet under.