Nikkei Biz Daily: Sony considering iPhone competitor

by Xav de Matos on Jun 27th 2009 8:00PM

Sony is considering a gaming/phone hybrid device as a direct competitor to the iPhone, according to Nikkei Business Daily (Via Reuters). Unless you're new to the Sony Phone rumor mill, a gaming/phone hybrid has long since been rumored to be in development, but has been denied by the Japanese hardware manufacturer.

Sony currently develops mobile devices with Swedish partner Ericsson. In early 2009, MobileToday sources claimed Sony Ericsson had pitched the idea of a PlayStation-branded phone to Sony Corp, but was denied the rights to use the trademark. The rumor went on to further claim Sony only plans to license a PlayStation phone if the company plans to make handsets independently from Ericsson. In May 2009, Sony Ericsson president Hideki Komiyama stated that his company was destined to "lose" if they did not adapt to the "new technology and new market environment" -- presumably referring to Apple's iPhone.

According to the new rumor, Sony plans to set up a project team to develop the new device, which will combine functions of the PSP and Sony Ericsson's mobile phones. A PSP phone? Just imagine how much that mythical beast would cost.

[Image Credit: Engadget]

Tags: ericsson, nikkei, psp-phone, rumor, sony, sony-ericsson

Reader Comments (72)

The PSPhone: Size of your pinky, $500 with contract.

:P

it better be small...I don't want to have to lug around some 2 ounce hunk of plastic. and it better have in-game phone answering, and in-game custom music. I'm a gamer not a barbarian. If I'm driving I shouldn't have to pause my remote play PSone classics to pick up the phone.

whos to say that theres some un-announced features of the psp-go? who knows eh?, everyones complaining about its price... and it has got bluetooth... putting phone capabilities in it would increase its price.

and on to the touch screen thingy that everyone seems to be obsessed with... ( i personally prefer buttons than touch) but didnt Sony recently say that u can use da psp while its closed???...

and the whole contract thing... theres nothing stopping sony from making it unlocked to all networks, and therefore allowing ppl to use pay as you go sims, or there old existing ones... or take out a sim only contract and just stick the sim in the psp-go...

i think that sony has a few undisclosed features of the psp-go, but i could be rong, lets just hope that sony does actually know what its doing... fingers crossed eh?

I would imagine that the PSP Go is testing the waters for how people will handle the size, then build the PSPhone around that general for factor. You can't make it too small or the gaming aspect will be lost.

Good Luck with that one Sony!

Is that a haiku? ...

Haikus are generally longer than one line.

That is right you putz
Haikus are more than one line
Such a stupid putz

is hobbes a haiku artist?

Title should read: Sony considering losing more money.

Yo, last paragraph. "...develop the a new device, which..."?

Other than that, I'm not much of a phone person, really. All I need is my PSP and my Tracfone, and I'm good 2 go.

Sold! Now just release SOMETHING!!

iPhone competitor? Riiiight.

So that's what the big spring 2010 overhaul is going to be. PlayStation Network will begin accepting cellular transmissions.

sony's makes me confused. whenever i want to buy a psp, a rumour pops in which makes me wait for the new one. i really hope sony listens to fans and take consideration on hardware designs. a psp with touch screen, phone, camera, and gps functions will be superb. dual analogs would be nice too, i guess.

That would cost a fortune. No thanks.

nah, it sounds like an iphone with buttons. it'll probably be expensive at launch, and at a very reasonable price 3 months later.

well if it has a phone then maybe it could be subsidized. only thing is, i wouldn't want to have to wait until my phone contract was up (or switch carriers) just to be able to get the new PSP. i feel like some kind of tightly integrated dongle (kind of like a SIM card i guess) and carrier specific bundles (including the PSP and dongle) would be the best way to go about it. then you could sell them without a phone, and with out a contract as a result, as well (kind of like iPhone and iPod Touch). might get a little confusing in the market though. i just don't want to see "get the new PSP! only on AT&T!" which alienates much of the market right off the bat.

i see...FAIL.

Finally! cross game voice chat!

the only upgrade to the PSN that i want.

Too late, market's saturated. Remember what happened with the Zune? Not pretty.

But on the other hand, if it didn't have all the damned requirements the iPhone does, including having to use iTunes and AT&T, then maybe there's a glimmer of hope.

Markets too saturated?
On either side of the Phone/handheld divide there's not much in the way of competition. On the Phone side there's the iPhone, which isn't exactly great for games beyond solitaire, and on the handheld side there's the DS, which doesn't do phone at all.

Dean you're dumb. Do you even own an iPhone/itouch? Zenonia, Peggle, Quest, Hysteria, Star Defence, Space Ace, Oregon Trail, Stone Loops, Top Gun, Time Crisis, Fast & the Furious, Hero of Sparta, Myst.. I could go on. Those are all amazing games. Now with the super fast 3G-S iPhone, it's a serious gaming platform that makes bundles of cash. Deal with it. =P

I was more pointing that there's not really many full games. It's like just having PSN/XBLA games, would you buy a PS3/360 if it just had them?

1. I can't take my ps3/xbox360 anywhere. They're not portable. So that's a dumb comparison.

2. Zenonia is like Legend of Zelda & at least 8-10 hrs long. Hero of Sparta is like God of War for PSP and just as lengthly. Quest is at very long as well. These are full, well developed games. And the Sims3 just released and it's again another full long game.. In fact the only real difference between that and the PC version is you can only make 1 character.

iPhone is a serious gaming platform!! Sooner or later everyone has to except this. It probably sells more games then the PSP! can anyone verify that? I would love to know the stats.

It can't be a serious gaming platform without buttons and an analog stick.

Why? Because its too difficult to control everything with motion and a touch screen. Granted some games work fine without them but for me to take the itouch/iphone seriously as a gaming platform Apple needs to make it designed for gaming with buttons and an analog stick.

Zenonia would probably be really fun if the controls weren't so god awful.

The only decent games I've played on the iPhone, besides solitaire, are Tetris (which is alright) and Peggle (which is awesome). Every other game I've tried has more or less been pretty bad, regardless of effort, due to the gimped controls.

I have heard of companies that are releasing clip on controllers for the Ipod Touch and IPhone that will let you play games with a D-Pad and buttons. That certainly helps a lot.

Just give me a Dragonball Z Budokai game on the IPhone platform and I am golden.

The i-phone is a serious gaming system? Maybe in the way that my graphing calculator is a serious gaming system. "Yo, I've got drug trader, pac-man, space invaders..."
Anyway in Asia people use cellphones just so they can ignore the people around them, and the PSP doesn't need a phone function to accomplish that. I'll eat my words if I see some guy playing Giren's Greed on an i-phone in the subway.

it wouldn't cost a lot with a 2 year contract.

this would be just like the iphone except stronger and better. also, add a frikin touch screen and keep the psp go design.

i hear ya. i half expected them to say the PSP Go was the PSPhone when it first leaked. it's perfectly set up to be a phone when it's closed, and a gaming device when open. and if it had a touch screen, they could use an on-screen virtual keyboard so they wouldn't have to add a whole crap load of more buttons. it is a serious possibility at least IMHO.

plus the PSP Go already has most of the features of a phone anyway hardware wise (Mic, Speakers, Bluetooth, WiFi, D-Pad, Memory). and with the now rumored 'non-gaming applications' coming to the PSN they could cover address books and other phone functions with a firmware update. they would just need to add a the phone hardware and a touchscreen to bring it all together.

Well the iPhone currently cost's about $600(yep more than PS3). I doubt adding phone and a touchscreen capabilities to the PSP would really cost $350, so it could be a vaguely affordable phone/console.
The only issue is it'd only be affordable on contract, Phone +PSP ain't gonna be much less than $400, and don't expect ti to be much smaller than the PSPgo.

Its over 9000!!!!!!!!!!! oops wrong post... no wait...

The only thing is, remember the PSP Go? Sony admitted to raising the price just because they felt like it. They actually removed parts, reducing cost, but added the extra price, making it over twice as expensive as the current PSP. Not to mention the ridiculous (if pretty), VAIO P netbook, which is almost $1,000! The iPhone's parts are only $178 dollars, but adding advertising, manufacturing, etc. Is what makes it go up to $600.

That's a little misleading.. It's $600 flat out for the 32gig, but if you sign a 2 yr contract it's only $199 for the 16 gig and $299 for the 32 gig (that's For the new 3G-S, I assume the regular 3G model is even cheaper now)

So let me get this straight, PSPgo high price (I agree it's more than it should be) is really bad because they admitted to raising it (the only company I think that's ever admitted it, not the only one to do it)
But Apple making a phone for $180 then selling it for over three times the price because of marketing (which every company does too) is acceptable?

Also the DSi removes the GBA slot add's two very crappy cameras n a SD slot and add's $80 to the cost, which is fairly comparable to the PSP removing the UMD drive, slimming down and adding a 16GB drive(and updating the guts, as with every PSP revision) and adding $80 to it. Yet the PSPgo's price raise is the worst thing in the world?

That's because the DSI added hardware making it more costly to build. I agree the price is too high but I understand the increase I guess. The PSP-Go is clearly cheaper to build and they raised it significantly more and didn't even drop the price of the old 3000 unit.. Which I assume is everyones biggest quam.

Also most of these arguments are dumb.. Everyones comparing the price of an iPhone to the DSI or PSP. But it's not a stand alone gameing platform. It's a PHONE!
every new phone on the market is at least $ 200-500. Besides the fact that the iPhone is wayy more versatile then other phones, everyone needs to quit comparing it to just gaming devices cause it does so much more!

It's a phone, game device, Internet, email, gps/compass, music/video store, plus it has a ton of buisness oriented utilities.

The reason the iPhone would be compared to this is it's the only phone with any major efforts into the gaming market, and Apple telling folks its a good game handheld, they even send me emails telling em that it's great for games(don't even tell me it's phone features).
And it's only really on game sites ( i.e Joystiq) where the gaming gets brought up anyway.
And I agree $200-500 for a device that's ultimately just to talk to someone is a bit expensive.
As for the feature list PSP has - internet(and with it email) GPS(with the add-on), Music and video playback, Vidzone store, games, Skype for phone, so all it's lacking is the business app's n GSM and your sorted.

Another market to fail in.

PSP4000 Phone? WTF Man they've already released an overpriced PSP and now they want to top that with an over-priced PSP Phone? We're in recession and they're trying to bleed us dry those batards!

I know, right? When Sony holds me at gunpoint and tries to force me to buy their stuff I'll be so mad.

[/sarcasm]

when I'm gaming on my PSP, I don't want to be bothered with phone calls and constant text messages, getting a text message during Rock Band Unplogged or GoW would be a bitch, same goes for a phone call. You want gaming on your cell phone, then get the iPhone and play the few real games on there (real good quality I mean). I think it's a bad idea, for me at least.

unplugged***.....lol

the iphone is suffering from the wii syndrome. tons of hardware sold, great peripheral market, tons of shovelware with the true gems being buried beneath it. if anyone has an iphone or itouch, i recommend zenonia, zombieville USA, amateur surgeon, knights onrush, peggle, and fieldrunners. very excellent games, all of them. and all of them are $6 or under.

@Sly

Yeah but unlike the Wii, I can use my iPhone to do 400 other things. So when gaming starts to stagnate on the device I merely shrug my shoulders and listen to music.

Or you know.....make a phone call >___>

Sony need to make up their own mind first about which platform they're going to use. Currently, Sony Ericsson makes phones using Windows Mobile, S60, and later Android. WTF? Can Sony really make an iPhone killer if they cannot even decide what platform they're supposed to focus on?
2nd, instead of being Apple envy, Sony should focus on not screwing up their own stuff. Let's start with pricing. $250 PSPgo, $300 X Walkman, $1500 netbook, Sony need to realize that they cannot justify premium price just by the Sony branding. Also, instead of worrying about Apple, Sony need to look around. Microsoft is ready with ZuneHD/Winmo/360. Maybe Sony should worry about MS instead of Apple.

Huh. Last i heard the Ericsson division was resistant to the idea of making a PSP Phone. I forget who said it or when, but i remember it being said.

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Nikkei Biz Daily: Sony considering iPhone competitor

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