Once upon a time when phones ran BREW or J2ME (or Symbian), there were two views by carriers on how to manage what apps were available on their networks. In the West, carriers went for a walled-garden approach where you had to beg to get your apps on their decks. The upside is if you got on and especially if you got premium placement you'd sell a lot of apps. But there was not a lot of choice and the carriers were the gatekeepers. In Asia, however, they eschewed both walled-gardens and also any notion of programming. What you had were Websites chock full of 1000s of apps, mostly selling for the equivalent of 99c, many of them derivative and just rip-offs of other games or the same game re-skinned 100 times by a developer to try to dominate as much shelf space as possible.
What we have today with both Android and iOS is more like the latter than the former, but as someone who had to go bowing and scraping to get placement for apps on the decks of the major US carriers, it was no fun, and if Apple or Google were to switch to that model, developers would be raising hell.
I don't think either Apple or Google care about games. They're almost universally free and supported solely by microtransactions. That doesn't make them bad; some are quite good, but the platform owners have thrown their hands up and said basically let the market sort things out. If you have money to pay for customer acquisitions, you have a chance. If you don't, you're probably not going to make any money. That's just the way it is and it's not going to change. If you want a "managed" games market, then buy a PS5, XSX, or Switch.