The Wii U isn't "doomed" or anything close to that, but it's not because of how the sales compare to previous consoles. As others have pointed out, it's not nearly the same situation (I had trouble finding a 360 until the following April, and I was very lucky to have a Wii reserved for Day 1; launch day for the Wii U was eeeeasy for me, and it seems like its gotten easier to find since then).
Even if Jan-June are slow sales-wise for the Wii U, which I fully expect, I don't think they necessarily need to panic. Their future is going to depend heavily on how it performs next fall against one or both new consoles, what games it has, what partners with 3rd parties Nintendo forges or doesn't forge, etc.
They're hardly doomed right now, although I can certainly see the possibility where the Wii U performs poorly in the long-term. That's the thing -- I don't really feel like it has underperformed. With the lineup of games, both at launch and coming in Q1/Q2, and the hype (or lack thereof) leading up to the launch, I hope most people weren't expecting anything near a repeat of the Wii's 2006/2007 success.
Historically, a console's performance at launch is very much over-blown. Obviously, you want to do well, but especially for a console that is launching first to lead off a generation, a system doesn't get defined right away. The 360 hardly had a great start, and even the PS2 had a slow first 6-9 months in America. I actually remember reading articles back in Spring/Summer '01 about how Nintendo and/or Microsoft could overtake Sony, based on the marketshare at that point in time. It seems laughable looking back; IIRC, the PS2 more than doubled the combined sales of the Xbox and GameCube over the 2001 holiday (with the ridiculous lineup of GTA3, MGS2, FFX, DMC, etc.). It was an unbelievable time...that was where the PS2 was really defined, and basically the "console war" was a battle for 2nd place between MS and Nintendo from the start.
The point is, there's so many "what if's" that proclaiming the Wii U as a success or failure is incredibly premature at this point. From where I sit, nothing has been unexpected about the Wii U based on my expectations since the re-debut at E3. Except ZombiU being a hell of a lot better than I thought it would be.
Without knowing what the next MS and Sony systems are, when they are both launching, what game's they'll have, what games Nintendo will have after Q2, etc., it's incredibly early to speculate on what the Wii U is eventually going to be. Nintendo definitely has a lot of work to do if they want the system to remain viable over the next several years, but again, this has been readily apparent for several months. The Nov/Dec sales are reflective of that.