It's no surprise that pokemon GO has become the next biggest mobile hit. Ever since its release, the app has been dominating the charts. And rightfully so! The game is creative, easy to pick up, engaging, and contains a suprising amount of depth and future growth.

But amidst the talk of "Nintendo should focus mobile" and "It was obvious that Nintendo was going to do well on mobile," I felt the need to point out: NINTENDO IS NOT THE SOLE CONTRIBUTOR!

You may ask, who cares? Well, there are a few good reasons as to why this is important:

1- The developers of Pokemon GO, Niantic, seem to be ignored even though the bulk of Pokemon GO was implemented in their previous game, Ingress.

2- Nintendo striking gold with Pokemon GO is not indicative of their future success on mobile. Pokemon was made for mobile platforms, has a worldwide appeal, a popular TV show, many related accessories, and IT'S OWN COMPANY! No other Nintendo franchise has this much support, so expecting Nintendo's next mobile endeavor to be a hit is a HUGE assumption (let's not forget miitomo). There is no reason for Nintendo to give up handheld for mobile (especially when they can do well on both)

Yeah but Nintendo owns part of Niantic so...

Also nobody said that any other Nintendo mobile game will do as well as Pokémon GO, in fact I think non of them will do better other than Mario (MAYBE)

Nintendo owns part of Niantic

Pokemon Company also owns part of Niantic I believe, and Nintendo has a 33% direct share of Pok Co. Gamefreak (?) I think it is also has a stake of Pokemon Company and Nintendo AGAIN has a significant stake in that company as well

basically long story short is that Nintendo has a very large stake in the Pokemon Co and most likely also has a large stake in Niantic at this point due to that.

Bear in mind the success of Pokemon GO is arguably mainly due to the fact that it is the first real game to come to mobile that bears the Pokemon brand NOT so much due to the software from Niantic. Its fairly basic at hte moment, and to be far Ingress was not really a big hit.

People just like Pikachu and Charmander and co. its that simple.

It is a big hit for Nintendo.

its a big weird how Nintendo owns significant portions of all of these random smaller companies but when you add up how everything is cut up Nintendo is most likely the majority share owner of them all. Pokemon Co and Gamefreak without a doubt and then Nintendo has some sort of decent stake in Niantic itself

I don't think Nintendo will ever give up the handheld market if they maintain anywhere near 3DS sales. they have been making a lot of money with the 3DS, if not for the Wii U's failures their numbers would be a lot better.

they do quite well with BOTH software and hardware in terms of profiting.

However I do have to disagree with you to some degree. Pokemon is definitely one of Nintendo's biggest franchises, but I think its fairly safe to say if Nintendo released a very simple Mario or Donkey Kong game that they would likely do excellent on mobile. A lot of casuals at some point in their lives have played a platformer like Mario and for a few bucks would pick it up for their phones

I mean look at some of the stuff people play on mobile, things as simple as slicing fruit that flies at you have gotten incredibly popular. no doubt a release of like Mario Bros 1 on mobile would do incredibly well

I'm with your overall sentiment though, Nintendo is unlikely to have anywhere near the market on mobile overall as they have on their own handheld platform where they are less restricted.

Its true Pokemon is to some degree an exception, like you can't walk into any kids or teenage trendy store without seeing Pikachu tshirts or Pokemon cards and things, even to this day

Not only that Nintendo practically own Pokemon IP, its also have part in Pokemon Company and in Niantic itself, also whole idea of Pokemon Go was started buy Iwata.

From the game's announcement event where even miyamoto was present and talking about the project:

"To tell you the truth, I have been working on this project for about two years along with Nintendo's Mr. Iwata, and I really hoped we could make the announcement together. That desire is part of why I decided to hold this conference today."
The Pokémon Company will act as a partner with Niantic, Inc. to move forward with the creation of Pokémon GO.
Not just that, but one more company—Nintendo—has also joined us as a partner on this project.
So today, I would like to talk about this project that Niantic, Inc., Nintendo, and The Pokémon Company are working on."

@ bold 

Were they talking about Google or some other partner/company?

Most likly Google.

Microsoft also used to own Bungie, but to whom do we attribute the success of Halo? Once again, people should give credit to where credit is due

@bolded: the mention of Ingress wasn't to say that it was popular, it was to show that Niantic already did most of the heavy lifting for pokemon GO. The owner of Niantic shouldn't get ALL of the fame when Niantic did a lot of work.

No Niantic, no Pokemon GO. I'm not trying to debate which of the 2 companies is better, I'm trying to give credit to where it is due

Pokemon is a huge outlier to the other Nintendo IP. The only rival is mario. DK and zelda are big, but not global phenomena big. Want an estimate? Compare the entire sales of either franchise to mario kart wii or pokemon red. The fact the 1 pokemon game come close to beating out the lifetime sales of an entire franchises is really indicative of how BIG pokemon is.

Mario may do well on mobile, but the biggest difference between it and pokemon is that pokemon was designed for mobile devices while mario was designed for home consoles. Try playing a platformer (that requires precise button inputs) on a touchscreen. It's not pretty