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

[bdbdbd]

@Shadow1980: Great breakdown! Really enjoyed it. The problem I see (not necessarily with your post), is the focus on hardware. What you really should be looking at (and analyse) is the software. What software was on the system and how did it do. When you look at the DS, it had - just like PS2 - in the end pretty much everything imaginable (both also had a number or multiple purchases per owner). PSP did extremely well, but Japan was an anomaly for it as well, where there was the Monster Hunter phenomenon.