Phone software sales is absolutely different, though. It used to be difficult to get ringtones - only PalmOS (and blackberry? I never had one) devices had applications, and the market was so small it was laughable.
By making applications easy to make and (extremely) easy to buy, the focus of smart phones has shifted dramatically. The industry is more interested in side-channel profits where previously they were a dead-end, used only to drive a few long-tail sales.
edit to agree with other comment: absolutely, carriers are largely untouched by this, if you ignore the massively-increased bandwidth usage (which would have happened anyway).
All the smartphones had applications. They all had app stores, but they were done by 3rd parties. The big difference was that smartphones were much smaller in 2006 than 2011.
The industry is still all about revenue from plans, at least in the US. These revenues subsidize cell phones, including the iPhone. What's the data on profit that Apple makes from apps? I suspect that it's a small fraction of their profit on the device.
By making applications easy to make and (extremely) easy to buy, the focus of smart phones has shifted dramatically. The industry is more interested in side-channel profits where previously they were a dead-end, used only to drive a few long-tail sales.
edit to agree with other comment: absolutely, carriers are largely untouched by this, if you ignore the massively-increased bandwidth usage (which would have happened anyway).