Report: Sony Builds PSP Phone Team

Although Sony's said the popularity of versatile download-ready platforms like iPhone support the market positioning for its "premium" PSP Go, the company's hesitated to position the handheld directly against mobile smartphones. But according to the Nikkei business daily (as reported by Reuters) the company is planning to assemble a technology team to start exploring a new product that will bring the world of its Ericsson mobile phone and its portable gaming hardware closer together. Sony hasn't confirmed nor denied Nikkei's report, but with many Japanese publishers like Sega, Square Enix and Capcom developing games for Apple's iPod and iPhone, it's conceivable the company wants to confront a threat to its portable gaming business from the mobile market, possibly by developing a hardware device of its own. In a similar vein, Sony recently said that it wants to encourage developers to make a broad array of apps for PSP users to download, "an opportunity to develop non-gaming applications." To that end, the company reduced the cost of its devkit, too.