alt Hacker NewsThat seems a tad reductionist. Why not just say the iPhone was completely inconsequential because afterall it's simply another "computer". Why not go even back further and start the timer at the first physical implementation of a Turing machine?
The iPhone killer UX + App store release can be directly traced to the growth in tech in the subsequent years its release.
I think it would have happened regardless - late Symbian from Nokia was pretty close and Maemo was already a thing with N900 not that far off in the future, not to mention Android.
We might have been possibly better of actually, with the Apple walled garden abominations and user device lockdowns not being dragged into the mainstream.