I agree they didn’t “get lucky”, they timed their device to the costs that were outside of their control. This is a common theme in venture capital: timing. You have to time your entry correctly. Too early and it’s too expensive, too late and someone else did it and maybe took the market.

After that I think we have different ideas of what innovation is. To me innovation is inventing. Something new. Blackberry was the innovative device. They were the first (common) smartphone. Touch screens existed in various places (some things released, some not), apple didn’t innovate that. Yes even the pinch to zoom existed on some smart table thing. Scrolling? Pretty sure that was old fry. Touch screen on phones? Pretty sure Nokia had that. So what did apple do? What apple does well is refine. They took existing idea/invention of a smartphone, they took the existing tech/invention of a touchscreen, they timed it, and put out the a touch phone. This was possible because costs of touchscreens came down. The march of technology did not depend on apple.