Apple was not the first smartphone manufacturer, and not even the first to sell one with a touchscreen. But its product resonated with the largest number of people, at first, which helped it to scale and work out favorable deals with suppliers to help it ship more smartphones over the years. After Apple's initial dominance, the rest of the market essentially became commoditized, with the majority of manufacturers building hardware on top of Google's Android operating system. There are now smartphones that can do pretty much whatever you want them to, at whatever price fits, and then there are Apple phones. (The company still holds a 44% of the US smartphone market.)
The nascent commercial drone industry is starting to look similar.
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