There is something exciting about releasing a game on mobile... everybody has a phone, not everybody has a desktop. I feel that as a developer you can do more with a pc and I'm not really too fond of touch controls; I always get good results, but I almost always prefer playing my mobile games on my own dev pc version. It pretty much always depends on your game, if you have an awesome console game it will do better on consoles and if you have an awesome mobile game it will do better on mobile.
This guy seems rather salty, but it is good information.
I don't think you need a publisher, but just this past week I was surprised how much Apple's submission process has changed. My first game did not need a privacy policy or support web page, but now they require it; which, requires running a server or hosting files with somebody that does run a server. I am pretty new to web development, so my submission included links to bare bones .txt web pages for my privacy policy and support info.
To specifically answer your question a good case study may be a game like "Stardew Valley". It seems to me that you can grow from a desktop launch, but a lot of phone apps just get "buried". It is still fun to develop for mobile, but if you have something really great, get it out on desktop and then move up from there... unless you have a strictly "mobile" game that doesn't translate to other platforms. A good example of failed translation may be match 3 puzzle games; I remember a Disney Frozen match 3 game on PlayStation, I downloaded it to play multiplayer with family and it had a monetization model similar to candy crush. Which really only works on mobile IMO, but who knows maybe Disney raked in the cash on that game and all rules exist to be broken (right?).
Anyways, I guess if you are trying to make revenue what is important is a plan... a business plan.