iPhone competitors have been trying their best to counter the mighty app store with widgets. The N97 tried to do that with internet widgets on the homescreen and the Motorola Cliq tries the same with social media integration on the MotoBlur UI. While IMO none of them is a success, at least not against the iPhone and its amazing multitouch UI coupled with the AppStore.
But if you really want your iPhone to compete in the widgets war, You will soon have the luxury of SmartScreen on your iPhone / iPod touch running firmware 3.x. This cool addon puts some amazing widgets on your iPhone LockScreen. You can swipe around these just like you do with your springboard pages and at the same time play / rearrange with the widgets just like you do with the Apps. Some of the widgets demoed are the calendar, stocks, weather etc. Below is a cool video demo of Smart screen.
A SDK for SmartScreen would be out in November, so that you can have your own custom widgets up there. You can reach the developers over at MediaPhone.
This thing is certainly not official and will be released mostly on cydia store against a nominal charge.
