Apple doesn't innovate terribly much, there were smart phones before the iPhone, the iPhone was just a better one. There were tablets before the iPad and the iPad was just a better tablet.
Apple's strength isn't in coming up with NEW things, I would say quite the opposite as they're usually very late into any given market. Apple's strength is coming up with products that are better than the ones that came before, in their Apple-y way.
The options prior were half-dead PalmOS, Windows CE devices like the iPaq, and the Blackberry.
The blackberry was the ultimate pager, but didn't have a functional web browser. The Windows device was pretty much awful, and PalmOS was waiting for euthanasia.
In the past this has been true because their exceptional design skills. But companies learned that skill, it's not unique to Apple anymore. So for example, the Apple watch isn't objectively significantly better than Google's Watch OS.
But Apple still has a lot of resources and capabilities it can deploy to make something a sucsess, like any other big company, so maybe that's what we should except from the current Apple - altough considering the circumstances - this can be very lucrative.
Apple's strength isn't in coming up with NEW things, I would say quite the opposite as they're usually very late into any given market. Apple's strength is coming up with products that are better than the ones that came before, in their Apple-y way.