Is Sony planning an "iPhone killer" that plays PSP games? (From The Northern Echo)

Is Sony planning an "iPhone killer" that plays PSP games?

11:57am Friday 5th March 2010 in

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SONY is rumoured to be working on a convergence device marrying the best of its Walkman mobile phones with the PSP hand-held gaming device.

According to the respected Wall Street Journal, the new hand-held will be capable of playing downloaded PlayStation games (presumably PSP Go software).

Until now, Sony has avoided a head-on challenge to the iPhone's dominance of the smartphone arena.

That's despite Sony's early lead with the P800, P910i Symbian hand-sets which laid down the multi-media template later picked up so successfully by Apple.

Sony's mobile division ceded the smartphone market to Apple without much of a fight, preferring to concentrate on cheaper Walkman music phones.

But now it seems the company has woken up to the vast riches to be earned in the smartphone marketplace.

In a full bore assault on Apple, Sony boffins are also examining ways to build an iPad-style computer that will blur the distinction between hand-helds, netbooks, an e-Reader and a PSP. That's quite a challenge.

Both devices will be designed to work with Sony's new online sales channel - similar to iTunes - that launches later this month.

One hopes the new digital distribution model will be rather better than the old Sonic Stage software that had a reputation for crashing and, when it wasn't freezing, ran at the pace of an arthritic snail smothered in tar.