If you look at the chart in the essay, you'll see that though there were lots of what I called 'proto-smartphones' before the iPhone, and enthusiasts (like me!) loved them, the actual user base was tiny. SMS was huge, MMS was a rounding error and very few people were doing anything else. I was a mobile analyst - I even went to the actual S60 launch event where the Nokia 7650 was announced - and then worked at a telco, and I wrote some more about this a few years ago. https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2016/2/19/mobile-sma...
(Also, Blackberry was big for UK teenaged girls due to free BBM)
(Also, Blackberry was big for UK teenaged girls due to free BBM)