No company "tries to take Nintendo out of the handheld market", they have no vendetta against Nintendo.

They offer their own handheld to the market and hope to make profits of this market segment in the long run. But some people seem to be happier, if there were no competition whatsoever, which could bring some new ideas to the table or sets the focus of their handheld games differently than almighty Big N.

Persona 4 Golden machine.

It never ceases to amaze me over the years how every challenger to Nintendo's handheld crown has made the EXACT SAME MISTAKE....

Pricing their system significantly higher than Nintendo's thinking that more powerful hardware = better sales. It's really that simple.

Game Boy vs. Game Gear & Lynx... $89.99 vs $149.99 & $179.99
GBA vs, well, no one... and it was still only $129.99 at launch, later $99.99 for the SP.
DS vs PSP... $129.99 (for original phat) vs. $249.99
3DS vs Vita... $249.99 vs $299.99... this was the first stalemate as both handhelds struggled at launch, but Nintendo has since dropped the price by $100 ($120 if you count the 2DS), and now it's selling like hot cakes.

impressive, just slightly more than 'no one can take justin bieber out of the music market'

Lol the only competition handheld I have is the PSP.

3DS software sales have fallen tremendously compared to DS though. Look at the actual numbers on Nintendo's financial statements. It's part of the reason they're struggling to make the same profit as in years past.

It's a shrinking market, but Nintendo is fighting valiantly to prevent erosion as much as possible.

The DS had sold 183.9 million pieces of software through its first 10 quarters on the market, the 3DS has sold 95 million through its first 10 quarters. 

Damn, that's a pretty big difference. But, on the other hand, the DS had sold 20m more units in this point of its life (or something), so that accounts for SOME of the "lost" sales.

But yeah, the handheld market is shrinking, and I wonder how Nintendo will counter that next time around...

The iPhone 5S 6 will bring the 3DS and the rest of Nintendo to it's knees.

True enough but in those first 10 quarters, Nintendo blew up the emerging "casual" market with massive hits like Nintendogs and Brain Training, despite dropping sequels for such titles, Nintendo has yet to truely recapture the gamers that came in for those games alone and really with the 3DS they seem to stirr away from even trying with more effort and promotion being sent away from the early releases of those games and more toward tried and true Nintendo staples.

While they are unlikely to ever recreate the number of sales that the DS had (especially with digital games slowly but surely eating into their retail pie) the handheld market is probably as strong if not stronger then it was back in the days of the GBA so it isn't as if the protable market (especially in Japan where it is king) is being completely outclassed by the emgerging mobile gaming market.

I think its pretty clear by now that Smartphones and the 3DS can co-exist. Its why when I see those dumb "Nintendo should make IOS games" I just laugh. I have a Galaxy 3 and the only games I play on it are some stupid field goal kicking game and there is a baseball one that I like, and those get played when I am in the bathroom. Sony dropped the ball big time with the Vita because it had alot of potential. They tried to act like Killzone, Resistance, and LBP are big time sellers, when in reality other than LBP 1, those games were already flops even before the Vita came out.