Not really. For example, Blackberry was very popular but the platform/API was loathed by developers.

Very popular with business folk using them for enterprise apps, not consumers wanting to buy fart apps and games.

Exactly, if you can't attract casual developers, then you can't attract consumers. Look at the hit that is Angry Birds, there's still no Blackberry version and that's gone from casual startup to monolith of a gaming company.

Well to be fair, it was/is extremely popular with IT staff for easy integration with their MS stacks and managing devices.

If someone came up with this like that for Android; that would be a killer app.

kodablah isn't saying the developers will like the platform, he's just saying they'll be drawn to it once the consumers are there.