I think several smart phones were successful (at least in europe) and had a more open development environment. You could install unapproved apps (up to S60 2nd ed. After that some APIs were restricted for unsigned apps. But even then you could buy those certificates). There was no company I know of that disallowed satire or certain programming languages or interpreters on their phones.
Those phones were:
Sony Ericsson P800 (you could even run javac on it in) and its successors P900/P910
Several Nokia S60 phones before 3rd ed.
With limited APIs S60 3rd ed. like the Nokia E90 (my last phone before the arrival of Android phones)
In 2003 I had a iPaq PDA with Pocket PC 2002. It had a marketplace ... some of my apps where sold by the local HP distributer and I was quite happy ;)
These devices where not mainstream because of poor hardware capabilities, and because of the lack of public Wifi / 3G networks, but still I was amazed by how much it can help me organize.
Apple makes cool products and its timing was perfect. That's about it.
Technology marches forward. My N1 has more power than my desktop did just a few short years ago.
Prior initiatives died primarily because of technology limits that made the real usability of apps incredibly limited.
Having seen [2], I think my point is even stronger - first class smartphone development really began with the iPhone (the App Store predates any other competitor). Of the third party services, only 4 predate the iPhone by more than a month or two (and of those, only 2 achieved even the level of success needed for a Wikipedia page).