A huge part of the handheld market, especially with say DS, was simple pick-up-and-play games; phones now provide this for very cheap or even free, which represents enormous competition for any portable machine trying to win people's limited time and money.

Look at the sales of pretty much any other handheld device released since Switch; they've all sold tiny numbers, cos the market for a dedicatd handheld has largely dried up. 

It's not that Switch faced little competition, it in fact face very intense competition from both mobile gaming on the portable front and PS4/5 on the console front, it was fighting a war on two fronts against very powerful and entrenched enemies.

It doesn't matter. If Switch had no portability, it wouldn't have been the giant success that it was. The Switch being a hybrid is an objective advantage that, unlike Sony, Nintendo could capitalize on due to their strong presence and software in the handheld space.

Vita failed because it didn't have compelling software, and Sony's main playerbase is on home consoles, contrasting Nintendo.

Sony and Nintendo play to their strengths. Now that it's possible to release a "reasonably priced" portable version of the PS6, Sony is going for it. Because there are no longer significant downsides to having more hardware options and tapping into the portable market, seeing as how scalable games are.

The claim that Switch faced no competition on the portable front isn't true at all though, as cheap/free portable gaming being available on a device everyone already owns is massive competition to any portable console trying to make it big in the post-smartphone era. 3DS sold less than half of the DS due to this, and mobile has only grown in strength since then.

Switch faced an uphill battle on both the console and portable fronts, squeezed on both sides by formidible and well entrenched alternatives.

I find it interesting how some people will argue that the PS2 wassuccessful on the metric of its success compared to conpetitor systems, meanwhile others will point toward the Switch’s even bigger dominance in the handheld market as an way of undermining Switch’s success. Nothing inherently wrong with either perspective, it’s just something funny I’m noticing lol.

Also, an important note worth keeping in mind: It’s not as though Switch was the only hybrid/handheld on the market: Once upon a time there was a Vita which was seeing success especially in JP up until 2019/2020, then came Steam Deck, ROG Ally, etc. None of them ended up coming anywhere close to Nintendo’s success in the market.

Forum issue.

My claim was that it didn't have a direct competition in the handheld space. Emphasis on "direct". Do you disagree with this? If mobile phones are indeed direct competition, then the Switch is a massive failure in terms of marketshare and other metrics. But no, this just isn't how it works. Mobile gaming and console/PC gaming for the most part appeal to different demographics looking for different things.

Nintendo is unique in that it still offers "console gaming" on the go. Mobile phones don't provide the experience of a dedicated handheld or home console yet (but they did inherit some DS/PSP indie style games and built on them, therefore limiting Switch and dedicated handhelds' growth potential to an extent). Other home consoles aren't portable yet.

Accessing both handheld and home console crowds with one platform is a selling point that Sony would love to have, but it wasn't feasible for them in the past.

Without portability, the Switch would have sold less. If Vita were an affordable "PS4 portable" then the PS4 would've sold more. This is just common sense regardless of what or who we deem competition.

Nothing in the article states people bought it as a DVD player.  It talks about how it was an additional selling point (which it was) that complimented the game library and price.

Your claim is people bought it exclusively as a player only.  

You still have provided zero data.  Do you know what data is?  

I get why you are worried about goalposts, given you did exactly that.

People bought it as a DVD isn't the same argument as saying playing dvds was an additional selling point.  The former is made up and nobody has substantiated, the latter nobody disagreed with.

Not too mention the xbox played dvds too....  but yet, sold 1/8.  

Being portable did help Switch sell more, of course, but it also came with significant challenges like strict power limits and as result less AAA third party support.

Competition doesn't necessarily need to be "direct" to be a huge hurdle; by 2017 it was much, much harder to convince people to drop $300 on a portable gaming device when the kind of simple, pick up and play games that were a huge part of the appeal of say Gameboy, GBA, and DS were now essentially free on a device everyone already owns.

More fleshed out games like BOTW were how Switch managed to sell well anyway, but the system's portable marketshare was not in any way a free lunch, it had to fight for it tooth and nail.