Nope. I lived it. I joined QuickOffice (now part of Google) in 2002. We built apps exlcusively for PalmOS back in the pilot days. The idea that only a handful of apps existed is nonsense. Handango had a thriving Palm community surrounding it for several years.

Palm ultimately failed because the leadership at Palm failed to recognize what they had and simply refused to innovate into the smartphone world until it was far too late. Still they showed that an app marketplace was something peple really wanted. Well before the iOS walled garden.