Based on your title that the consumers are responsible for innovation and not the tech companies I would say that it is 50% true. Why you may ask? Well let us see it from this perspective companies are the ones that make the product that the consumers buy and for the to stay at the top the company would need to make and release a better product, so both goes hand in hand as the consumers would want to have new technology at their hands companies will have to create them using the fund that they have collected from the consumers.
However for real innovation in technology to be created competition is also the key as if there is no competition in the market then the company that owns the product can monopolize the market space and just milk the consumers by giving small innovations. A great example here is Intel, because they have owned the greatest market share over the last decade since AMD cannot compete with the products they have until Ryzen they are milking the consumers for years with their I series that consumers are willing to pay for a price thus no great innovation was provided. And when innovation came to their competitor they are having a hard time releasing products that can compete to it.