At the rate it is going at it should sell 100 million lifetime (that is assuming it will take 5 years from the 3DS release date for a successor to come out).

Although once Pokemon X & Y come out along with The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, I would say the rate would increase at an incremental level. Following them is Super Smash Bros. 3D... so my final estimate would be... 130 million lifetime sales. Pokemon sells Nintendo handhelds.
A lot of people I know are holding out on buying a 3DS until Pokemon X & Y come out.

100 million

Where the 60mil and lower predictions???

Currently

↓↓↓ User's Predictions ↓↓↓

165mil⇒ KingdomHeartsFan
⇒
145mil⇒ Zelhawks37
145mil⇒ NobleTeam360
137,365,072⇒ Busted
130mil⇒ leyendax69
130mil⇒ Matt_182
120mil⇒ sethnintendo
117mil⇒ ktay95
115mil⇒ Salnax
110mil⇒ Cubedramirez
110mil⇒ Zorg1000
104,563,888⇒ shakarak
101mil⇒ ironmanDX
⇒
90mil⇒ betacon
90mil⇒ SnakeDrake
⇒

You'd have to be a fool to vote 60 million or under. I suppose you could also be a clairvoyant if it turns out to be true. Some new product could come and sweep handheld gaming away for good!

I doubt it though. Thanks for clarifying about the retail games. Are all available online and how long after retail release are they available for download?

I couldn't give a number! but I predict MONSTER sales ;)

About 50-60% of the DS' lifetime sales, so about 75 to 90 million. I'l go for the average and say around 82 million but I think that might be a tad high.

permanently, Some retail games however arent on eShop like the best 3ds game (my personal fav) Kid Icarus Uprising. Some are only Digital as well, more of the japanese oriented ones! Fire Emblem+AC are best digital. Also pokemon but im a collector so retail for me

if 82mil is high, then look at everybody else's numbers! You have the lowest lol

Yes, I'm one of those loonies that believe that market segregation and partitioning, especially in the mobile/tablet direction, will cause the classic and dedicated handheld market to collapse within reasonable time (3-5 years at the most).

It is already very clear that the Vita/3DS won't come anywhere near the 220 million + installed base of the PSP/DS so we can already see the market having its rug swept from underneath its feet. I also believe that the 8th gen of home consoles will be a historical first; it will move less hardware than the previous one, due to much the same as the handheld markets downwards trend, there is just no way that the PS4/Xbone/Wii U combo will sell 300 million or more.

I also expect software sales on the home console market to take a plunge for the 8th gen, gaming has assumed too many forms for all to be as profitable as they would be with less options available.

My 3DS prediction will stand and I have the outmost faith that it will be a lot closer to home that any of the others in here at this point. I simply cannot fathom those who make lofty 130 million + predictions for this machine. I thought the Wii might have taught us to apply more than past trends and hope and dreams when making predictions. Predicting is about the future, not the past.

The market is changing, pulling in several directions and will have more participants than ever before and the viable public to purchase these services and machines just isn't big enough to case tremors in all sectors (or, indeed, any of them). Market leeching will occurr and no dedicated console is likely to ever sell anywhere near DS and PS2 levels or dominate the market in the same way.

No prediction from you Tbone :P? Anyways i'm going with 125 Million lifetime.