The company said the portable DS handheld, which originally came out in November 2004, has sold an accumulated 47 million devices to become the U.S.’s best-selling videogame system of all time.

Additionally, the Wii sold more than seven million game consoles in 2010, marking the third consecutive year of such volumes–a feat Nintendo says has never been accomplished in the history of game systems.

The figures are impressive for the game company, which has always focused on a family-friendly niche, with lovable characters bouncing around in imaginary worlds, rather than on complex multiplayer games focused on violence and intense graphics.

But whether it will be enough to sustain the company against rivals such as the Xbox is unclear.

The Xbox has been the best-selling console for the past few months, a position that was supercharged in November when Microsoft released the Kinect, which allows users to play hands-free, similarly to how the Wii operates but taken to the next level.

Sales of the Kinect accessories have been strong, and have helped expand Microsoft’s audience beyond the hard-core gamer.

Nintendo is not expected to release a new console in the short term, and critics are unclear about the 3DS, which is the new portable handheld coming that boosts 3-D images without the need for glasses.

Nintendo said it’s coming to the U.S. in March, and more details will be available soon. Nintendo is attending the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week for the first time in 16 years, but it’s not expected to make big news at the show.

But it’s unclear whether the 3DS can compete as a standalone gaming device as other multipurpose devices–like Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, as well as other smartphones–gain market share.

Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime begs to differ when forecasting the trends of the future: “When we look ahead to 2011, we see new portable technology and more great Wii games that need to be seen to be believed.”

If he does say so himself.

While everyone is considering whether to brine or deep-fry the turkey this week, All Things Digital HQ will be busy with our preparations for D: Dive Into Mobile.

That includes setting the program, which takes place in two weeks and will open with an evening interview with Google’s Andy Rubin (pictured here).

As the search giant’s mobile chief and principal force and creator of its Android operating system, Rubin is responsible for the ongoing development of the major rival to the Apple iPhone.

Many have challenged Android, including a recent jab from Apple CEO Steve Jobs, questioning its overall experience and whether or not it’s actually open.

Nonetheless, Rubin and Android have proven to be a disruptive and fast-growing force in the mobile space, aiming for dominance akin to Microsoft’s on the desktop.

Ironic? Yes.

Rubin started as an engineer at Apple and later worked at General Magic, where he participated in developing Magic Cap, an operating system and interface for handheld devices. When Magic Cap failed, Rubin joined Artemis Research, founded by Steve Perlman, which became WebTV and was eventually acquired by Microsoft.

After several years, Rubin left to found another smartphone effort called Danger, which was also acquired by Microsoft, in 2008.

Disillusionment with his ouster as CEO of Danger motivated him to found Android, which was later acquired by Google.

Now, it seems Rubin is poised to make good on his first efforts at making a truly smart smartphone ubiquitous.

And he is only one of many of the industry heavyweight speakers at D: Dive Into Mobile, among them: Dan Hesse, president and CEO of Sprint Nextel; Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of Research in Motion; Mike McCue, CEO of Flipboard; Joe Belfiore, vice president of Windows Phone Program Management at Microsoft; Jon Rubinstein of Palm, now owned by Hewlett-Packard; Foursquare CEO and co-founder Dennis Crowley; Google advertising czar Susan Wojcicki; and Glenn Lurie, president of Emerging Devices for AT&T.

Plus, there is also one more big speaker we’ll be announcing soon, so stay tuned.

D: Dive Into Mobile will be held at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco on December 6 and 7.

It represents the very first brand extension of our flagship D: All Things Digital conference, now in its ninth year of grilling the big names in tech and media to sold-out analog audiences and scores more on the Web.

And, as always, there will be no PowerPoints, no panels and definitely no pontificating. What there will be are unrehearsed, unscripted and unexpected interviews, where real news is often broken.

But, unlike big D, D: Dive Into Mobile is topic-focused, drilling down deeply into the ubiquity of mobile technology and devices, and its implications for brands, organizations and consumers worldwide.

Along with Walt Mossberg and me, Mossberg Solution’s Katherine Boehret and MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka will be conducting the interviews.

As usual, we’ll be liveblogging the whole thing and also posting highlight videos.

But there’s nothing like being there, so you can sign up for the D: Dive Into Mobile conference here.

In September, retail sales of new video game gear was down eight percent from a year ago to $1.18 billion, according to market research firm NPD Group. Hardware sales were down 19 percent and software sales were down six percent, although accessory sales were up 13 percent. I would note that sales were up from $818.9 million in August.

NPD has revamped its monthly reports on the industry, in particular stressing that the report only includes sales of new goods at retail, and does not include sales of used games, rentals, mobile games, social networking games or digitally distributed games. NPD also has stopped breaking out sales data for the individual handheld and console platforms, and it has stopped providing unit sales information for software games.

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The videogame industry is littered with the corpses of failed portable game systems. Anyone still using a Nokia (NOK) N-Gage? How about a Sega Game Gear or a TurboExpress?

We got a first peek at the new device, which is called the Jungle, via a Web site that appears to be part of a very un-Panasonic like guerrilla marketing campaign. In a jokey tone, the Jungle’s Web site calls the device’s display “kick ass” and then tells visitors to “stay very closely tuned unless you’re tone deaf.” (For those curious, the Jungle looks like a shrunk-down portable DVD player with a built-in keyboard.)

If Panasonic (PC) needs to know how tough the handheld game market is, all they have to do is look at the struggles facing the current market leader. Nintendo Co.’s DS handheld has been one of the best-selling game systems of all time since its debut in 2004, but demand for the device has recently slowed. It’s been plagued by piracy and a challenge from simple games played on mobile phones.

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April was another lousy month for the videogame industry. With overall revenue down 26 percent and hardware down 37 percent, it was the worst monthly year-over-year sales decline since last July, according to research house The NPD Group. It was also the 10th time in the last 13 months that sales have fallen year-over-year.

• Nintendo sold 277,2000 Wiis, down from 557,500 in March and 340,000 a year ago. The company sold 440,800 Nintendo DS’s, down from 700,800 in March and 1.04 million a year ago.
• Microsoft sold 185,400 Xbox 360s, down from 338,400 in March, but up from 175,000 a year ago.
• Sony sold 180,800 PlayStation 3s, down from 313,900 in March, but up from 127,000 a year ago. And it sold 65,500 PSPs, down from 119,900 in March and 116,000 a year ago.

What’s driving the drops? Blame the portable gaming industry, which contributed more than its fair share to the industry decline, said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

“The portable business across hardware, software and accessories accounted for 25 percent of total industry dollar sales in April,” Frazier explained. “But declines in portable sales compared to April ’09 accounted for 61 percent of the total industry decrease.”

That’s just abysmal, even if April is traditionally the slowest month of the year for videogame sales. Consider this: At 440,800, sales of the Nintendo DS tanked by more than 50 percent from more than one million last April.

So what’s going on? Perhaps consumers are postponing new portable game system purchases in anticipation of Nintendo’s new 3DS. Or perhaps they’re finding that their smartphones make fine gaming devices.

It’s not yet clear. But what is clear, and painfully so, is that the hardware refresh promised by Sony (SNE) and Microsoft (MSFT), which are adding new motion technology to their players, and Nintendo, which is debuting the 3-D version of its DS handheld, can’t come soon enough.

Last week, BoomTown was in Washington, D.C., my old stomping grounds for 15 years, from attending Georgetown University as an undergraduate to covering the beginnings of the Internet at the Washington Post.

I miss a lot of things about living there, but most definitely not the poisonous political partisanship that you get sucked into from the minute you arrive.

Most recently, for example, it was ugly battles over financial reform, some tough remarks by President Barack Obama toward the GOP and–I swear–the “controversy” over some airbrushing of House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi on a magazine cover.

In other words, it does not take much for the denizens there to descend into the mud-slinging swamp the city was built on.

But it’s almost a relief to be in D.C. rather than in California, given how increasingly hostile the atmosphere is getting as a range of companies wrestle over a range of issues both key and trivial.

The hostilities especially center on the three main powers of Silicon Valley today: Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL) and Facebook.

And, specifically, the conflicts include Apple versus Google and Adobe (ADBE) and HTC and the First Amendment; Google versus Apple and Facebook and Microsoft (MSFT) and the Federal Trade Commission and–oh, yes–China; and Facebook versus Google and Twitter and anyone who gets in the way of its Manifest Destiny of Like-buttoning the Web.

Even Yahoo (YHOO) is entering the fray, with CEO Carol Bartz taking please-don’t-forget-us shots at Google and Facebook recently.

The Apple shooting match with Adobe over its Flash video technology is perhaps the most riveting, especially because it is the computer giant’s CEO, Steve Jobs, personally and relentlessly conducting the assault.

Jobs called Adobe technology shoddy, Adobe execs called Jobs controlling, the blogosphere erupted.

While issues around the use of Flash are a lot more complex, of course, they illustrate just how much the digital sector is at a critical inflection point.

That’s especially true as the game moves from the laptop/desktop, Web-centric world to one more social, mobile and focused on innovative new devices, such as smartphones and tablets.

This means the potential for a shift in power, obviously–which, in turn, means more wrangling among and between the digital powers-that-be.

It’s the top of mind as the next D: All Things Digital conference approaches in less than a month. In our eighth foray out, there have never been more overt power struggles among the various players who will be onstage.

Last year, in our opening essay for D7, titled “Welcome to Web 3.0,” we made a prediction.

“So what’s the seminal development that’s ushering in the era of Web 3.0? It’s the real arrival, after years of false predictions, of the thin client, running clean, simple software, against cloud-based data and services,” we wrote, specifically referencing the growing popularity of Apple’s iPod and iPhone as the harbingers of this important trend.

We continued: “But this is not just about one company, one platform or even one form factor. No, this new phenomenon is about handheld computers from many companies, with software platforms and distribution mechanisms tightly tied to cloud-based services, whether they are multi-player games, e-commerce offerings or corporate databases.”

Looking back over the last year, we think we got it pretty right, as companies of all kinds and in all arenas raced to be part of the social, mobile, cloud-centered action.

This fusion and, really, collision of key trends will be at the heart of what we’ll be focusing on at D8 as the major companies in tech and media try to figure out how consumers want to conduct their digital lives going forward and with what devices.

And inevitably, that has begun to cause some major rifts among and between the powers that be throughout tech and media. It’s clear to us that a major realignment of consumer expectations and desires is taking place, along with a fundamental shift in how we all relate to computing.

Still, with all the changes, it’s important to keep a respectful tone, which seems to have gotten a bit lost of late, especially now when every tiny shift and disagreement enters the digital echo chamber and quickly moves from loud to strident.

Such noise inevitably makes the whole competitive necessity of Silicon Valley–which is one of its greatest assets, of course–seem tinny and small, much like what you hear out of Washington all the time.

One of the reasons I moved out West was that it always seemed that–whatever the rivalry or wrangling–Silicon Valley was much better than that.

So even though healthy and robust competition is what makes it all work in tech, as Sergeant Esterhaus of “Hill Street Blues” used to say in the trademark phrase, which you can see in this video, “Let’s be careful out there”:

[T-shirt photo courtesy of Zazzle]

Last week, BoomTown was in Washington, D.C., my old stomping grounds for 15 years, from attending Georgetown University as an undergraduate to covering the beginnings of the Internet at the Washington Post.

I miss a lot of things about living there, but most definitely not the poisonous political partisanship that you get sucked into from the minute you arrive.

Most recently, for example, it was ugly battles over financial reform, some tough remarks by President Barack Obama toward the GOP and–I swear–the “controversy” over some airbrushing of House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi on a magazine cover.

In other words, it does not take much for the denizens there to descend into the mud-slinging swamp the city was built on.

But it’s almost a relief to be in D.C. rather than in California, given how increasingly hostile the atmosphere is getting as a range of companies wrestle over a range of issues both key and trivial.

The hostilities especially center on the three main powers of Silicon Valley today: Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL) and Facebook.

And, specifically, the conflicts include Apple versus Google and Adobe (ADBE) and HTC and the First Amendment; Google versus Apple and Facebook and Microsoft (MSFT) and the Federal Trade Commission and–oh, yes–China; and Facebook versus Google and Twitter and anyone who gets in the way of its Manifest Destiny of Like-buttoning the Web.

Even Yahoo (YHOO) is entering the fray, with CEO Carol Bartz taking please-don’t-forget-us shots at Google and Facebook recently.

The Apple shooting match with Adobe over its Flash video technology is perhaps the most riveting, especially because it is the computer giant’s CEO, Steve Jobs, personally and relentlessly conducting the assault.

Jobs called Adobe technology shoddy, Adobe execs called Jobs controlling, the blogosphere erupted.

While issues around the use of Flash are a lot more complex, of course, they illustrate just how much the digital sector is at a critical inflection point.

That’s especially true as the game moves from the laptop/desktop, Web-centric world to one more social, mobile and focused on innovative new devices, such as smartphones and tablets.

This means the potential for a shift in power, obviously–which, in turn, means more wrangling among and between the digital powers-that-be.

It’s the top of mind as the next D: All Things Digital conference approaches in less than a month. In our eighth foray out, there have never been more overt power struggles among the various players who will be onstage.

Last year, in our opening essay for D7, titled “Welcome to Web 3.0,” we made a prediction.

“So what’s the seminal development that’s ushering in the era of Web 3.0? It’s the real arrival, after years of false predictions, of the thin client, running clean, simple software, against cloud-based data and services,” we wrote, specifically referencing the growing popularity of Apple’s iPod and iPhone as the harbingers of this important trend.

We continued: “But this is not just about one company, one platform or even one form factor. No, this new phenomenon is about handheld computers from many companies, with software platforms and distribution mechanisms tightly tied to cloud-based services, whether they are multi-player games, e-commerce offerings or corporate databases.”

Looking back over the last year, we think we got it pretty right, as companies of all kinds and in all arenas raced to be part of the social, mobile, cloud-centered action.

This fusion and, really, collision of key trends will be at the heart of what we’ll be focusing on at D8 as the major companies in tech and media try to figure out how consumers want to conduct their digital lives going forward and with what devices.

And inevitably, that has begun to cause some major rifts among and between the powers that be throughout tech and media. It’s clear to us that a major realignment of consumer expectations and desires is taking place, along with a fundamental shift in how we all relate to computing.

Still, with all the changes, it’s important to keep a respectful tone, which seems to have gotten a bit lost of late, especially now when every tiny shift and disagreement enters the digital echo chamber and quickly moves from loud to strident.

Such noise inevitably makes the whole competitive necessity of Silicon Valley–which is one of its greatest assets, of course–seem tinny and small, much like what you hear out of Washington all the time.

One of the reasons I moved out West was that it always seemed that–whatever the rivalry or wrangling–Silicon Valley was much better than that.

So even though healthy and robust competition is what makes it all work in tech, as Sergeant Esterhaus of “Hill Street Blues” used to say in the trademark phrase, which you can see in this video, “Let’s be careful out there”:

[T-shirt photo courtesy of Zazzle]

Evidently the Taiwanese hardware manufacturer took one look at Palm’s (PALM) books and decided an acquisition isn’t worth the trouble. “There just weren’t enough synergies to take the deal forward,” a source close to talks between the two companies told Reuters.

And so speculation about a potential acquirer is turning elsewhere. Lenovo seems to be the leading candidate at the moment. The company has big aspirations in China’s mobile market and a penchant for making big foreign acquisitions. It purchased IBM’s (IBM) ThinkPad business a few years back and tried to buy Packard Bell, so why not Palm?

Well, for one thing, Palm’s market share is too small to be of real benefit to Lenovo. For another, the company is already committed to Google’s (GOOG) Android for the OS to run on its soon-to-debut Lephone.

Finally, Palm’s asking price is said to be around $1.3 billion. Lenovo had about $2.4 billion in net cash reserves on hand the end of 2009. Would Lenovo really spend more than half of that on Palm, a company whose books frightened off HTC? As Larry Dignan writes at ZDNet, it’s hard to make the case that it should.

So if not Lenovo, then who?

How about Hewlett-Packard (HPQ)? With handheld sales that fell by more than half year-over-year in its first quarter, HP is surely looking for a way to revive them and capture a larger portion of the important mobile market. Acquiring Palm could be a good way to do it. Here’s why:

• Yes, HP is a Windows shop with, no doubt, big plans for Windows Phone 7, but that OS will likely figure in devices aimed at the enterprise market. With Palm’s assets, HP could target the consumer space as well.
• Palm’s webOS is scalable. HP could use it in other devices–tablets, for example–differentiating them from those of competitors using open-source operating systems like Android.
• In Palm, HP would gain a turnkey smartphone division–a venture with a slick smartphone OS, a deep mobile patent portfolio, a talented R&D team, the beginnings of an app ecosystem and established carrier relationships.
• Palm and HP both call Silicon Valley home, and former Palm exec Todd Bradley currently heads up HP’s Personal Systems Group. Obviously, there would still be integration risks, but there are clear synergies in culture and location that would at least temper them a bit.
• HP has some $14 billion in cash on hand, more than enough to cover Palm’s rumored $1.3 billion asking price with plenty left over.

That seems to me to be a pretty compelling case. Has it been made inside HP? I can’t say for sure, though we may find out in the weeks ahead.

Data use will surge as cellphone makers produce more Web-enabled handsets. Cisco (CSCO) says there could be more than five billion such devices connected to mobile networks in four years.

The company expects smart phones and Internet-enabled laptops to drive 90 percent of mobile traffic within five years, by which time 400 million consumers will access the Internet through a mobile connection only.

India will see the highest increase in smart-phone penetration, which will triple over the same period, and the sharpest uptick in smart-phone users, which is expected to quintuple.

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Among the consoles, the Nintendo Wii sold 3.81 million units, more than triple the 1.26 million sold in November. The Sony (SNE) Playstation 3 sold 1.36 million units, nearly twice the number sold in the previous month. Microsoft (MSFT) Xbox 360 units were 1.31 million, up from 819,500 in November. Even the aging PS2 had a good month, with 333,200 units, up from 203,100 one month earlier.

In the handheld category, the Nintendo DS sold 3.31 million units, up from 1.7 million in November, while the Sony PSP sold 654,700 units, up from 293,000.

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