Comment by oblio

In the initial years HTC was one of the biggest Android manufacturers and their phones didn't really copy the iPhone.

Samsung was just better at marketing and other business aspects.

> and before that [Apple] were not even in the phone market much, yet alone launch their own phone.

This applies to Apple, too. Samsung learned how to make them. As did HTC, Sony, Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, OnePlus, etc, etc. Turns out, making smartphones is a very competitive business, but a lot of companies were good at it, at least for periods of time.