Apple (AAPL) Takes On Sony (SNE) And Nintendo In Games

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Applelogo1Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone does everything. It is a phone, a multimedia player, a web browser, and a washing machine.

Now, Apple wants the iPhone to be a gaming platform and it is going to take on the remarkably successful Nintendo DS and Sony (SNE) Playstation Portable, which currently rule the mobile video game market.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "Developers are being lured by Apple’s online method for delivering games, which has lowered distribution costs and made it possible to profit on games that sell for just a few dollars or are given away with advertising."

Just because there are games available does not mean that consumers will play them on an iPhone. The Sony and Nintendo products have been in the markets for years.

Betting against Apple as it moves into a highly competitive market is easy. Gaming would be considered remarkably crowded with Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft (MSFT) all in the mix and billions of dollars of sales in play.

But, most experts thought that the Mac would hit a ceiling because PCs ran the ubiquitous Windows OS and that the iPhone would never get much share because of the RIM (RIMM) Blackberry and dozens of smartphones from industry leaders Nokia (NOK), Samsung, and Sony Ericsson.

Those predictions did not work out.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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