They tried that with universal apps. No one was going to invest money on good games without the users being there and no users were going to buy the phone without the apps.

Even if Windows Phone had Nintendo level third place success, what would it have gained them? No company besides Apple and to a lesser extent Samsung make any real money on phones. I doubt the phone division even makes any really money, Samsung makes most of its mobile money from the parts it sells.

Google doesn’t even make that much from Android. They make some from Google Play Services and advertising but they also pay Apple billions a year to be the default search engine for iOS.