Nintendo's trying to widen it's indie standing by bringing in mobile ports. Not a bad idea actually. They didn't do it sooner because the immediate priority was to speed up the Wii U's menu load times, which they did.
I think people are missing the aim here. The WiiU gamepad does not have multitouch, and does have physical controls. Games designed around multitouch would not work well, but games designed for physical controls would. Mobile games using physical controls is actually an emerging trend pioneered by everything from Moga Pro to NVidia Shield. If they get it out quickly, this could be the most on top of things Nintendo has been for years. This doesn't compete with Apple, it competes with Ouya. Considering the platform I've heard this converts is iOS, there's a lot more games that could be converted than for competing Android solutions. Mobile games nearly always go to Apple first and Droid second.