Apple iPhone Fighting For Portable Game Console Supremacy?

“It’s not a phone, it’s a console experience”. This is what John Geleynse (Apple’s Director of Technology Evangelism) said during the “iPhone Tech Talk” in San Jose recently. There are some early indicators that Apple is trying to position themselves inside the game console market, such as the recent interview with Greg Joswiak (VP of iPod and iPhone product marketing) where he talked about the comparison of 3D graphic power on iPod touch and Nintendo DS. Besides that, Apple also putting some effort in showing their iPhone and iPod gaming capabilities at the recent TV Ads for their products. On top of that, the series of “EA Games Sneak Peek” events held at Apple stores around the US also shows that Apple is aggressively pushing their iPhone and iPod into the mobile gaming market.

Apple is going to find tough time in gaining market share when competing with Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. As Nintendo made up 79% of all portable gaming hardware sales in November. Besides that, Apple also has to come up with a strong marketing strategy to compete with the Gillette razor/razor blade strategy of Nintendo and Sony; They sell their gaming hardware as cheap as possible and even at loss, but they gain their profit margin on the games they sold.

It’s too early to say whether Apple can break into the mobile gaming market with its iPhone and iPod. Can Apple compete with Nintendo DS and Sony PSP with its high price hardware and low price games? Will cutting the price on iPhone and iPod hardware be compensate by its profit on cheaper games than Nintendo and Sony. Well, these questions will be answer in the coming years, we all have to look at where the trend will go for casual gaming experience.