I get what you are saying, but as someone who was coding mobile apps in 2003 (iPhone was released in 2007), I have to give a few details.

By the time iPhone was released, it was already too late for small companies. When you developed apps and games for MS PocketPC and Blackberry, you charged $20 per app, and any average quality product would make money.

In 2007, there were only 2 kinds of success stories:

1. Companies that were able to throw a lot of money around (Your example of Candy Crush).

2. Some rare flukes of someone getting rich with some app.

So what I was trying to say: The golden days were really before the release of the iPhone.