This is not a good example. The reason the iPod sold so poorly the first few years was because you can only sync them with Macs.
Very few people owned Macs, so iPod sales were poor. It took iTunes for Windows to come out before things changed.
Very few people owned Macs, so iPod sales were poor. It took iTunes for Windows to come out before things changed.
So while lack of Windows compatibility was certainly an obstacle to the iPod's popularity, gaining it was not the single catalyst to its success.
In 2004, Apple was a rather small, formerly unhip (and on its way to becoming hip) manufacturer of computers.
The Apple of 2017 is one of the world's most recognized brands with a history of mobile expertise.
Apple Watch had the marketing of a $500B corporation behind it. The iPod did not.
In any case, iPhones have about 15%-25% of the global smartphone install base (with the US being the big outlier). I certainly count that as very limiting. Maybe not on quite the same magnitude as Macs were for early iPods, but Apple Watches so far also did a lot better than early iPods.
> iPhones have about 15%-25% of the global smartphone
> install base