I'm not sure if you're mis-remembering or I am, but the Bold 9000 (meteor) launched the year before the Storm. Though maybe you meant the 9700 (onyx)?

As I recall, the development cycle for Storm wasn't two years - it was less than a year. At that point it was the fastest cycle that RIM had ever had for a device, and it was done at the request of Verizon. Back then the iPhone was still an AT&T exclusive in the US market and Verizon demanded something from RIM so that they could compete with it.

I'll echo the fact that nobody I knew internally seemed interested in using Storm as a primary device. I think everyone knew it was junk. But Storm 2 went a long way towards a device that I would actually be interested in using.