If anything, it was
the other way around:
👉 Android’s impending release spurred Apple to reconsider its (Steve Jobs) decision
not to support apps.
Android was
announced and
its SDK publicly released in 2007. And it was
intended to support Apps while in development before that before Apple had even announced the iPhone.
The grapevine from Mountain View to Cupertino doesn't stretch long. Apple must have known what Android had had up their sleeves. And they were able to preempt it by merely a few days in
pre-announcing a vapourware SDK of their own - which wasn't released before 2008. That announcement came just weeks after Jobs had been using their WWDC 2007 to tell developers that
web apps were going to be it, to somewhat lukewarm developer reception.
Pre-announcing vapourware in an open letter by Jobs without having anything to show wasn't merely uncharacteristic for Apple and Jobs - it was basically unprecedented. The timeframe, that Jobs didn't relent on the "app question" before the iPhone was available, has also been
corroborated by his biography.
This is provably wrong, as evidenced by
Nokia's Symbian OS phones and Microsoft's 2003
Windows Mobile for Smartphones. Though it is of course fair to say that these products weren't great hits and their usability and attractiveness of available paled considerably, compared to what we got on Android and iPhone OS from 2008 onwards.