For example the Motorola Atrix was the first smart phone with a finger print scanner, but if you actually owned one of these you'll know that it was awful. It wasn't until Apple put Touch ID on the iPhone that people actually were interested in using finger print scanners, and the rest of the industry followed suit and copied Apple, not Motorola even though Motorola was first.
Another example is app stores. Apple didn't invent app stores. But after the iPhone added an app store, it changed the entire industry because of how easy Apple made it for anyone to develop for iPhone.