"The fact that Smith Micro wouldn’t make the effort to support Genesis whilst it was in development forced Daz into developing Studio."
DAZ Studio, if memory serves, began longer ago than that. The big impetus was when Poser 5 was in development, and Curious Labs (pre MSI and eFrontier, let alone Smith Micro) demanded that DAZ pay licensing fees for the Vicky/Mike meshes to use the Hair and Cloth rooms. Then, Poser 5 flopped so hard that the sound of it hitting the floor could be heard all across the CG industry. DAZ Panicked and decided that their only assurance of long-term survival was to make their own Poser. IIRC, DS came out in 2005, but I didn't think it was ready for primetime until 2012-2013 or so.