1. Vita currently has more sales but at this rate the Wii U will overtake it definitely before E3 i can imagine
2. as far as we know the Wii U was only profitable a year ago and i am not sure if Sony has told us the Vita is profitable so hard to say.
3. counting retail games Wii U has sold more but if that digital numbers for the Vita are that much greater then i can imagine Vita has overall sold more games.

Who's doing MUCH better? None.

I remember that many people said "the PS3 is/was a failure" when comparing its sales to its predecessor.
While I don't think that it makes too much sense, just try this logic with the WiiU. How big a failure would THAT be? Even far worse than the Vita.

It's sad and both deserve better, but the bad sales are no suprise either.

Indeed they both do deserve better. The Vita is such a great platform from a hardware perspective. The OLED screen and dual thumbsticks and build quality(haven't tried the LCD model so I can't comment)... Such a shame it suffers from current lack of software... The Wii U might not be a console powerhouse but I do admire that Nintendo are supporting it with their own games considering most major 3rd parties either abandoned it or never supported it in the first place.

I'd wager Vita is more profitable. Hardware sales will be slightly in Wii U's favour overall I think, but software sales is a tough one.

Wii U has a few games that have sold far better than any Vita games, but has nowhere near as much software overall and never will. Vita has 39 games coming out in Japan between now and March to Wii U's 2. It's not unrealistic to think that actually, those 39 games might actually sell more overall than the other 2, even if the 2 Wii U releases are big sellers.

We've also got the issue of in Japan, it's becoming clear than Digital may now be bigger than physical on Vita clouding sales further.

If you count the Vita memory cards as "hardware sales", I wouldn't be sure that the WiiU is more profitably in that area. These memory cards must be insanely profitable for Sony.

On the other hand, if you count the Amiibos as "hardware", Nintendo has their own cash cow in hardware profits now. ;)

Both very true. Though Amiibos are for 3DS too ;) so it has to share the spoils. I don't doubt Amiibos will come across to Nintendos next systems now too. I'm not interested in the functionality of them in the slightest. However I am very tempted to pick up figures of my favourite Nintendo characters just for the sake of it.

Realistically, Wii U

In my house, Vita

in terms of getting games the vita, in your points

1) wii u
2) wii u /vita
3) wii u