Apple a bigger threat than Microsoft, says Nintendo president

Nintendo of America president has Reggie Fils-Aime has said he considers Apple a bigger threat than rival console maker Microsoft. In an interview with Forbes, Fils-Aime pointed to iPhone and iPod devices as Nintendo's immediate competition for people's time for playing games.

"Do I think that in the near term [Apple] can hurt us more than Microsoft? Absolutely," said Fils-Aime.

The Nintendo of America chief sees similarly tough competition for a consumer's attention in Facebook games, citing the makers of Farmville as another rival. “It’s all about time," he said. "I compete with Zynga, I compete with surfing the net, I compete with the newspaper.”

The remarks come after Apple reported 14.1 million iPhones sold in the three months up to September 25, following the iPhone 4 launch in June, which amounts to a 91 percent surge over the same three months last year. Sales of iPods have also been healthy, with 9.1 million sold in the same quarter, up 11 percent on the previous year. Lifetime sales of the iPad had also climbed to nearly 7.5 million units at the time.

Fils-Aime would have also been paying close attention in September when Apple claimed the "number one portable game player in the world" title for its iPod Touch at the press conference in which it unveiled Game Center, Apple's gaming "social network". At the time, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs hailed the iPod Touch's lifetime sales figures as outdoing those of the Nintendo DS and PSP combined, and emphasized the 1.5 billion games (or ostensibly gamelike apps) sold to date.