That's too bad. I was really hoping for Apple to spend all of their resources trying to build a car and then go out of business because IMO they ruined computing for everybody by popularizing walled gardens, anemic UIs and super limited software.
Phones where a walled garden long before the iPhone. J2ME apps sucked, but there where a lot of them.
Calling the iPhone the first smartphone is mostly just marketing and form factor. They got the interface right and built a better browser, but you could use the web, email, apps, take pictures etc on phones long before the iPhone.
There have always been a unlocked phones. But, in many cases these phones did not even have data ports, just the built in connection to a walled garden unless you physically opened them.
PS: I was writing phone software 2004-2006 so really walled gardens where a thing. People would even gasp pay for ring tones.
