iPhone eats up PSP and DS share

Apple’s digital distribution model makes it tough to track sales numbers for iPhone games, but a new report from Flurry says that the device’s share of the US market grew considerably last year – at the expense of the PSP and DS.

Mobile Entertainment reports that in 2009 the iPhone claimed a 19 per cent share of the handheld games market – significantly up from the five per cent it claimed in 2008.

The big news though is that it’s the PSP which appears to be the biggest victim, seeing its portable games market share drop from 20 per cent in 2008 to 11 per cent last year. DS’s share also fell, from 75 per cent to 70 per cent.

In addition, the report claims that iPhone’s overall share of the games software market climbed year-on-year from one per cent to five per cent. This represents an annual value of $500m.

Unless the other major video game platform providers (i.e., Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft) respond accordingly, Apple could continue to roll up video game market share,” Flurry added.