Would the innovation have happened if Apple hadn't driven it? Not any time soon.
Maemo, Openmoko, and Android all serve as counterexamples to your claim that Apple was the sole driver of recent smartphone innovation. Our smartphones might look a bit different now had Apple not released the iPhone, but they would still exist. Industry consortia were developing higher-bandwidth data standards (a Danish friend told me in 200[012] that 256kbit/s access on cell phones was already widespread), companies were experimenting with different form factors, operating systems were being developed, etc.
In my view, your definition needs to be tighter to cover scenarios such as these.
Perceived scenarios such as these are often a product of missing information.
Maemo, Openmoko, and Android all serve as counterexamples to your claim that Apple was the sole driver of recent smartphone innovation. Our smartphones might look a bit different now had Apple not released the iPhone, but they would still exist. Industry consortia were developing higher-bandwidth data standards (a Danish friend told me in 200[012] that 256kbit/s access on cell phones was already widespread), companies were experimenting with different form factors, operating systems were being developed, etc.
In my view, your definition needs to be tighter to cover scenarios such as these.
Perceived scenarios such as these are often a product of missing information.