you seem to be under the impression that Apple's iPhone was the first of it's kind. it wasn't.
What kind are we talking about? Smartphone? Definitely not the first. Touch screen phone? Nope. Phone you can install apps on? No...
How about this then -- first phone with mass market appeal, a consistent well defined UI designed only for touch and a tightly integrated implementation from the desktop software to the phone to even the carrier's network (visual voicemail anyone)? Nobody has touched that yet.
Android has some of the iPhone's features, yet came out after the iPhone.
RIM is still trying to figure out how to make a coherent touch interface and still hasn't managed to figure out how to properly sync media from a Mac (dunno about the PC -- feel free to chime in).
Palm was promising, but they showed up a year after the iPhone with the Pre and went round and round on trying to backdoor into iTunes for media syncing.
Windows Mobile is pretty much dying a slow and painful death, being pinched by the iPhone and Android. I don't see it going away quickly -- but given that Android is really about making a cheaper WinMo, I'm not sure what Microsoft's business model will be.
Then there is Nokia -- Nokia was the undisputed king of smartphones before Apple came along. The N95 was a very capable device. Even after the iPhone came along, Nokia still could best Apple in raw feature count. But Nokia has no idea on how to make a decent UI that's usable by average users. I had to write code for S60 platforms, and I had a hard time of making my way around on those devices. And Nokia's software for the desktop was downright horrible.
You are right -- Apple wasn't the first in most of the categories that the iPhone fits into. But Apple was the first to put all of those firsts, along with mixing in some of it's own experience with the Mac and the iPod, into making a one of a kind device that finally got a lot of people buying smart phones instead of cheap feature phones.