Apple's Q4 earnings are out, records set for revenue, earnings, and sales

[rocketpig]

Soleron said:

rocketpig said:

27.3m iOS devices sold over the summer.

I have the feeling executives at Sony and Nintendo are sweating bullets right about now. Those numbers are frightening.

There's a good chance that mobile gaming through a traditional device is slowly getting squeezed out, just as the iPad is squeezing laptop/netbook sales. Apple is finally bringing true device convergence through electronics. Everyone else is still playing catch-up

If mobile games were displacing handheld game sales, yes. But most of the movement is probably Flash games and casual phone/computer minigames (Minesweeper) transferring to a smartphone.

Real displacement will only happen when major third parties choose iOS as sole target for a game that would previously be developed for the DS or PSP. All I've seen is rushed ports and cut down versions of DS/PSP properties.

Also I believe tablets are a fad. No one except Apple will ever make money from them and the market will stop growing in a year or two. Credit to Apple for getting what demand there is, or creating such demand temporarily through shininess.

I think tablets in their current incarnations could be fads. As they expand more into basic office functionality and features become more robust and more apps are created for them, I think they'll carve a permanent niche into the market for people who need mobility but not the power of a laptop. With the sales of the iPad, it's hard to argue the legitimacy of the sector. Everyone I know who has one loves it and its use hasn't diminished at all since they purchased the device several months ago. That doesn't seem faddish to me.

iOS doesn't need to be the sole development for a game for displacement to happen. Look at DS sales; casual gamers are already jumping ship to other, more convergent, devices. Nintendo has even tried to make the DS a more convergent device itself. The hardcore gaming market will always exist on dedicated gaming market but that isn't what has made Nintendo its billions... it's the casuals who pick up a dedicated gaming device. With the power behind Android and iOS, I never see people carrying DSes around and playing them anymore. Everyone is sitting with a phone or a tablet to kill the time.

People keep ignoring mobile gaming devices but the numbers are right there for everyone to see. Companies are making money hand over fist on casual games for the platforms and people are buying them left and right while sales continue to drop for dedicated gaming machines.