PSP PHONE FROM SONY ERICSSON
Nowadays everything seems to be converging into a mobile phone. It already can be a perfectly good digital camera, a mobile TV station a music player or GPS receiver. One of the things missing here was a mobile gaming platform. But it's coming too.
Context & Ripple Effects
Days after a BBC report that Sony's handheld would offer internet calls put voice functionality on the PSP roadmap, Unwired View floats the bigger convergence step: a PSP-based phone built by Sony Ericsson. The claim is unconfirmed — flagged here as a rumor, with no statement from Sony or the handset joint venture behind it.
What gives the rumor directional weight is the arc it extends: the handset has already absorbed the digital camera, the music player, mobile TV and the GPS receiver, leaving the dedicated games console as the last standalone category it hasn't swallowed. Sony Ericsson sits exactly at that junction — a phone maker whose co-parent owns the PlayStation franchise.
First-order effects
- For Sony Ericsson, a PSP-branded handset would collapse two of the group's flagship product lines into one device, forcing internal questions about which brand, store and hardware roadmap carries the combined product.
- Until the rumor is confirmed or denied by Sony or Sony Ericsson, carriers planning holiday lineups have to hedge between positioning a gaming phone against the existing split of PSP-plus-handset bundles.
Second-order effects
- The internet-calls capability reported for the handheld points at how the phone function likely arrives: as software layered onto gaming hardware, which puts VoIP minutes inside a device carriers subsidize — direct pressure on operator voice revenue.
- Game publishers gain a potential second storefront attached to a phone's billing relationship, shifting bargaining power over mobile game distribution away from carrier decks toward the console holder's channel.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the boundary between handheld console makers and phone makers dissolves, and control of the platform layer — the games store, the firmware, the certification rules — becomes the battleground instead of hardware specifications.
- Every remaining single-purpose device maker (camera, GPS, music player) faces the same squeeze Sony's handheld does: attach to the handset as a platform partner or compete against a subsidized convergent device.
The trend: Convergence is marching through dedicated electronics one category at a time — camera, music, TV, GPS, and now gaming — pulling Sony Ericsson and PlayStation toward a single owned platform.