Another example: Nokia. Right before the iPhone was introduced, Nokia's R&D budget was _huge_ compared to Apple's. I guess that proves that Nokia is more innovative than Apple?
You have made sweeping and broad overgeneralizations that betray the complexity of the situation. Apple's masterstroke was not in inventing the concept of a smartphone, but in producing one that provided a much better user experience that the rest of the market. As for the differences in hardware and rf engineering, I'll leave that to someone more qualified to explain because my knowledge in the area is far from complete.
Actually Nokia date back to 1865 but they originally a wood pulp mill then rubber manufacturer. They got into electronics in the 1960s and focussed on phones from the 1990s.
Nokia developed HW, Symbian, S40, MeeGoo, and services. It also spent a bit on actual research. Pure research often pays off (in unpredictable ways). Developing a number of platforms turned out to be a bad idea.
S40 is still their monumental achievement: