I don't really think I buy the "it's an advertisment for Nintendo games!" ... millions and millions of people play Angry Birds on their smart devices too, they don't suddenly buy game consoles or portables just for that.
Ditto for Sonic ... the Sonic mobile games have been hugely successful in terms of tens of millions of downloads, but Sonic console/dedicated portable games are not selling one ioata better.
If anything I think if you give people "free" versions of something, even if they're not as "good" as the "real" games, so long as they're good fun, for a lot of people they're more likely to just say "yeah but I already have this other Pokemon game on my iPhone, I don't need a Nintendo portable" as an example.
And honestly Nintendo I think knows that full well, it was just more of a "if you can't beat them, join them" call on their part, they know damn well they stand to make a fortune off mobile games, so it didn't make sense just sit on the sidelines forever and do nothing while their hardware marketshare decreased either way. Might as well make money off smart devices if they're cannibalizing large chunks of your audience.
If a person likes those apps so much that they then feel compelling to buy a seperate $200-$300 piece of hardware just to play those franchises in more depth, that's more like a side benefit I think.
Mobile will be Nintendo's no.1 revenue generator in a few years IMO, above their traditional game business. I think they know this too, they didn't make that decision without doing profit projections, demographic breakdowns of smart device users, etc. etc.
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