Nintendo remains bullish in face of iPhone threat

Although it’s dangerously close to sounding like a stuck record, Nintendo has once again reiterated that it doesn’t view the Apple iPhone as a threat to its current period of dominance.

Speaking to VentureBeat, Nintendo of America’s vice president of sales Cammie Dunaway was quick to point out that the DS remains top of the pile right now, despite the iPhone’s highly encouraging sales statistics.

“It is interesting that for all of the talk of competition from Apple last year, here in the U.S. we had our best year ever, selling 11.2 million units,” said Dunaway, probably with a smug smile on her face.

“That has never been done by any game platform ever,” she continued. “Consumers are still finding fun with our products, and there is a lot of room to grow. If you look at the penetration of the market, the DS franchise here in the U.S. has a long way to go. In Japan, one in two consumers has a DS. Here, it is one in four. So we have room to grow.”

Nintendo may well need that room, despite Dunaway’s bravado: the recent news that PopCap’s iPhone smash hit Plants vs Zombies generated $1 million in revenue in just nine days is sure to have caused some murmurings at Nintendo, regardless of Dunaway’s insistence to the contrary.