The DS Lite came out a year and 3 months after the original DS and the 3DS XL came out 1 year and 5 months after the original 3DS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS#Models

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_3DS

Also even with the price drop the DS was cheaper.

Just another proof that Sony doesn't exactly belong to the smartest companies on this planet.

Sony is a company that follows. They always react, rarely invent. A company without visions.

They had and have music players and were beaten. They had and have TVs and were beaten. They had and have handhelds and were beaten. They had normal phones and were beaten. They had and have smartphones and were beaten. Now they have Sony TV and were beaten by Apple before they even bring it to the market. They are probably the only company in the world which has everything the entertainment industry has to offer right before them (movies, games, music and the respective hardware plus online infrastructure), but they just can't figure out how the hell to put all this into one working, financially successful ecosystem.

And because they listen to their strange but vocal internet fanbase the internal surprises and the wrong conclusions continue (people want PS4 more than other consoles and they go nuts about Killzone, Infamous and Nextdogs? => By taking the Miscrosoft X360 route this time [western games, violent games, charging for online, 90% concentration on male gamers from 12 to 25] we already won next gen, moneyhatting PC indies and killing internal middle/small game development teams was a good choice. / There might be some demand for PS Vita TV? => Let's bring it to the west, who knows it might be big [while in fact they'll bring it to those few Sony fans who will actually buy it] / People don't like our handheld? ? => Let's not analyze own game development and other mistakes but pretend instead that only smartphones hurt them [although they ironically have their own smarthpone/tablet PC department but they are not Apple, they don't know what to do with an obvious advantage]; let's also pretend Nintendo is in the same position ["handheld market quite badly hurt"] although they easily beat us again and have a successful handheld which will probably sell 100 million units when it's all said and done.)

The Vita is selling like it is due to the fact people used PSP's like smartphones/emulation/MonsterHunter devices.

PSP also got more games

The Title should be "Phones Have Hurt Sony Handheld Market “Quite Badly”.

they want handhelds to die especially since nintendo has the market lockdown!

Nintendo 3DS seems to be doing just fine, 150 million anyone!

I think that tablet gaming is also going to be an increasing part of the portable gaming market in the future.

this.

This is just an excuse. If Sony supported the PSV as Nintendo does the 3DS, PSV sales wouldn´t be as abysmal as they are. Instead they shut down three 1st party studios that worked on PSV games early this year and raised the whight flag, while Nintendo actually has a healthy market.