well... b/c is not

Seriously, some people don't know what they are talking about. Here's a quick lowdown of certain facts:

-There are now some 987 million downloads from the App Store. Game downloads are in the hundreds of millions. All this in less than a year. The App Store and the iPhone OS platform IS already a huge success, we don't have to wait for anything.
-You have basically two options when bying Apps, and these are the same as buying songs: pay with your credit card or pay using an iTunes gift card. What you buy doesn't show in your phone bill. When you buy Apps, you have to always type in your password so kids won't be able to buy apps unless you're stupid enough to give them your password.
-The iPhone OS provides rudimentary parental controls: you can block explicit content and access to certain built-in applications like safari, youtube, installing apps etc.
-Skype is already available on several phones, and it is rumored to be coming to iPhone as well.

IMO these are the building blocks of Apple's success with the iPhone platform:

-Innovative hardware/software platform
-Integration with iTunes
-Great developer tools and documentation
-A very good and easy distribution channel for the developers

If Nintendo would want to compete against the iPhone platform (which they don't seem to want to do, and quite honestly, why should they?) they would have to provide a similar or better platform.

-They certainly know how to make innovative hardware and software, so that wouldn't be a problem.
-They don't have access to a similar library of content that Apple has, and most probably would have to settle for a more limited library. The problem is that they would be starting from zero, so it would take time to negotiate the required contracts.
-I don't know what kind of dev tools Nintendo provides, but I highly doubt they are as high quality as the iPhone SDK and documentation Apple provides for free. Nintendo charges for their dev kit, and while it is a lot cheaper and for example a Sony dev kit, it costs a substantial amount nonetheless. Also, Nintendo is WAY more stringent in controlling who can develop for their platform.
-And finally, Nintendo could use the DSiWare as the distribution channel, but from what I gather they don't want it to be littered with thousands of minigames. Also, from what I've read the devs still have to deal with a lot more hassle than iPhone devs to get their games approved (for example apparently the devs are responsible for getting the ESBR ratings).

All in all, I think Nintendo and Apple are targeting a different portion of the markets, and also different kinds of developers. I believe Nintendo has a tight rope to walk to offer suitable DSiWare content without cannibalizing the full price game sales.

cost vs quality doesn't justify iphone being in the same market as the DS yet.

I have never met anyone who bought an iPhone to... play games.

My mobile phone plays games, and has a massive several "billion" install base. That doesn't mean I play games on it, and it definitely doesn't mean I'll ever *pay* to play games on it. This comes from someone who used to make mobile games...

But even worse than discounting the competition is saying that you are afraid of them.

Anyone knows that Apple is a powerful company. However, to be honest, its technology generally underperforms for the pricepoint.

As for the iPhone, a lot of people have them for business. So the sales numbers are skewed. In other words, I doubt my wife or my boss will be buying games on their business phones.

Thus, the market for actual game-players is not that large and the sweet spot for game pricing is much closer to DSware than DS carts.

This has always been the case for cell phone games. They are phones first. Other devices (music players, planners) second. And game players last. Apple has made the iPhone and iPod more game-friendly. But they have not made them game-centric.

Mike from Morgantow

nuff said!!

I don't want to recharge every 3-4 hours...

I play Galaga on my crappy samsung phone at least once a week!  What a classic!  Saved me many a quarter so far...

You can argue that every device that plays videogames is in direct competition with every other device that plays videogames because developer resources are limited as is the potential number of gamers, their time and their money.

With that said, while the iPod Touch/iPhone and the Nintendo DS are fairly close as far as videogame systems I don't believe that they are in that direct of comptition. They seem to be devices with complimentary strenghts and weaknesses at the moment which means that people are likely to favour one of the systems or buy both depending on what they're interested in, but it is unlikely that someone would buy either device as a replacement for the other ...

Apple does what Nintendon't

@Happy

Hi, thanks V_V I'd begun to wonder if I was right about this.

What I would like to hear is what Jobs has to say about the Iphones direction with Apps.

The model for apps seems to be more of a Google (search engine) type issue but it's a proprietary Google.