It'd be like Honda trying to sell their cars through a bunch of third-party car dealers like "Bob's Auto Mart" while BMW sold all of theirs through their own BMW-owned dealerships.
Why, ultimately, did Windows initially achieve market dominance? Because it evolved from MS-DOS.
Why did MS-DOS have market dominance? Because it ran on PC compatibles.
Why did PC compatibles have market dominance? Because they were drop-in replacements for the IBM PC.
And why, despite being relatively late to the market, despite having a relatively high price tag and a really ugly grey boxy look, did the IBM PC have market dominance? Because IBM put their product into the hands of their well-established and reputable corporate sales network dedicated to selling IBM hardware, and they sold it all over.
Of course, this argument is incomplete and flawed because I haven't used the words Lotus 1-2-3 yet. Unfortunately, the fact that killer apps also sell hardware comes as little relief for Android. The closest thing to a killer app that Android has come up with so far is Flash support. Unfortunately, with mobile Flash it's still not clear who is doing the killing and who is doing the dying.
If you were a large business buying computers in the mid 80's you bought them directly from manufacturer (Compaq, Apple, whoever).
If you were a small business you bought your computer(s) from a third party (computer store, Sears, wherever).
The Mac lost because most businesses bought for price and compatibility.
Of course, now that they lost that war, they have an awesome prize. They are the most profitable computer maker today.
Before Apple stores, you could go to CompUSA, and there was an Apple section staffed with Apple employees -- they even existed before the Apple stores became more ubiquitous.