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They did not willfully let their partners control the last mile. They demanded this right in their original OEM agreements, and used it to define the out of box experience for Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Circa 1999, the Department of Justice took it away from them as a result of an antitrust litigation settlement.

There's also Android and what the cell carriers are doing it with regards to bloatware and security updates to use as another source of material.

good point - they are facing a similar problem.

in some ways, android has it worse, because they have to deal with hardware vendors and carriers

Then there is something like this too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8546702