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Inside Symbian: the Platform Nokia Secretly Hates
DECS writes "The Symbian OS runs the majority of todays smartphones, and is generally regarded as a solid platform. All is not well behind the scenes however. Here's why Apple ported its own OS X to the ARM architecture for the iPhone, why Motorola left Symbian for Linux, and why Nokia executives secretly regard Symbian with contempt. An inside look from Symbian developers: Readers Write About Symbian, OS X and the iPhone."
I'm pretty sure Apple ported OS X for the same reason as Microsoft ported Windows CE. It was their OS.
My suspicion about the real reason they are not opening the iPhone up for development, is that they haven't really ported OS X at all. They've got a UI for the phone apps that looks and feels like OS X, but there are no Quartz libraries or any other libraries that third party developers would expect, the apps they have are all hand coded and heavily optimised. The device just doesn't have the power for a generic OS X like interface. Apple haven't released details about the clock speed or the CPU other than what company they are buying it from, but a quick check of the company's website shows that they sell two processors, both running at less than 200MHz. If they haven't made a secret deal for a chip that hasn't been announced yet, expect the iPhone to run at the speed of a PDA from 5 years ago.