Depends on whether you call an Xperia with controller attachment a handheld or not.

Yeah, almost as crazy as going from 20 million to 100 million and back again.

But we all know thats a pointless comparison.

Why?

The only way I could see the PSP brand continuing would be as a joint venture so that Sony doesn't have to shoulder all the risks.

The DS done exceptionally well. It isn't the standard of what a ''great'' performance is in regard to harware sales, even respective for its time. Just use the sales of its predecessors that had complete monopoly over the market, none reach DS numbers, they were much closer to the PSP's. It would be like saying any military FPS that falls short of 15m per console is performing poor because COD. You could make that comparison if you want but its beyond pointless and gives you no gauge of what actual success is for the respective game or product. 

Except the DS was PSP's direct competitor, so a comparison seems relevant.

Mind you, I'm not saying the PSP's lifetime sales were poor overall. Just that this was one aspect/context in which it could be said they were, in addition to the ones you listed.

Yeah, its a comparison that can be made but it isn't that inciteful into the systems respective success which I guess is what I'm getting at. With software comparisons though is quite different, that was definitely a failure on sony behalf and no system with 80m hardware units out there should only have total software sales of around 250m... Thats quite poor or at least below industry standards.

I had no idea it was that low.

Thaat's only about 3 games per system, yikes.

Piracy?

I don't know,it's not that people wasn't interesting by system itself it just that they didn't find the games they want on it,if Sony is confident that they will succeed to attract the 3rd party they will definitly make another one