If DS was a fluke where's the "inevitable" handheld decline?

[Faelco]

Pyro as Bill said:

Zod95 said:

Handheld hardware sales by year:

2001: 20M (considering GBA sold 80M in 4 years)

2002: 20M (considering GBA sold 80M in 4 years)

2003: 20M (considering GBA sold 80M in 4 years)

2004: 20M (considering GBA sold 80M in 4 years)

*Edit

The market is declining for 7 consecutive years with 2 major slumps in the last 3 years.

And if it wasn't for Sony creating a new segment (with PSP), the handheld market would probably be declining for more than 10 years.

The handheld market is gone.

Which 4 years did GBA sell 80m?

It sold 66m* between 2002-2005

74m* hh consoles were sold 2012-2015

*Excluding DS

Why "2012-2015" instead of "2011-2016"?

 

And the previous generation (2005-2011?) sold something like 240M. Sure, 240M to 75M isn't a decline :D