The iPhone/Android market is a threat to Sony but Nintendo? Not as much. Nintendo will always be king with the kids. There are parents out there who are crazy enough to get an iPhone or top of the line Android phone complete with an expensive 3 year contract for their kids but that's the really spoiled minority. Most parents would rather get their kid a DS. I think my brother recently bought my niece an iPhone at 15 but she's 15 and on top of that my brother spoils his princess more than the average parent does (so as long as he's not hitting me up for money all power to them.
While iOS took over Sony in the western mass market (someone posted a chart up on here showing that iOS market share overtook PSP in 2009) and Android is destined to be a big player in the game realm as well given their large and growing market share (especially with the teenage and young adult demographics), Sony will always have a place in Japan and with hardcore gamers in the west though. Smartphones have atrocious battery life. They're not designed for heavy gaming at all. Even playing something low-fi like Game Dev Story on lowest brightness settings is a juice guzzler. To be fair my HTC Desire HD has shitty battery capacity (1230 mAh) and I suspect Android OS is a bigger juice guzzler than iOS. But I can't imagine the battery life being all that much better on the iPhone 4.
Considering that the whole point of having a phone is so that other people can reach you and you can make calls when ended, you have to make sure you have enough juice to get through the day. With my PSP I don't even have to worry. I leave it plugged into my wall at home and I've yet to find myself needing 3-4 hours when I'm on the go. Unless it's a flight or something, it's not an issue (Luckily I have a DS Lite for those occassions. Maybe I should invest in a Kindle one of these days. Kindle's battery life is second to none). And if you were to charge the battery every day or two that's really going to take it's toll on the battery's long-term lifespan and energy capacity (though I have seen third-party 1800 mAh replacement batteries from Hong Kong selling for $10 and the customer reviews of those seem positive. So maybe i can rest easy and abuse my smartphone's battery to my heart's content. lol)
Oh and the DS, PSP, 3DS and NGP all have actual buttons. That's always nice. And the $30-40 price tags are justified if the game is of premium quality. It's hard to beat Game Dev Story bang for your buck wise at $5 but I'd say something like a Persona 3 Portable is worth $40 easy (and I did see it on sale on PSN for $20 and the UMD version was on sale on amazon.ca for $20 or $25. Something like that.)
