Over at Seeking ALpha there is an interesting article by Bruce Everiss. Bruce asks (and answers) a very interesting question: When it comes to games which device will win, netbooks or the iPhone?

Many will argue that the question is almost nonsensical. Games aren’t the primary focus of either the iPhone or netbooks. This can be countered by noting that games can be a compelling reason to buy a device. The next objection will be that the iPhone competes against other phones, not netbooks. Hold on there, the iPhone is a phone but at the things heart it is a go anywhere computer. Netbooks are go anywhere computers so the question is valid. So this is one great question. How does Bruce see things shaking out?

So as things stand it looks like netbooks are going to be the biggest gaming machine, by a significant multiple of what the iPhone achieves. In fact the netbook has the potential to be the biggest gaming platform of all. It should easily outperform all home consoles put together. It will be interesting to see this unfold.

If you follow Bruce’s definitions closely he’s absolutely right. The netbook will outdo the iPhone in the gaming market. But that is a specious comparison, he’s compaing a class of device against a single model of cell phone. It is a lot like saying that the Toyota Camry is really great car but the combined total of trucks sold around the world will dwarf the Camry in sales volume. Sure, it is a true statement but it doesn’t mean much. A better question is will the iPhone influence phone design enough to make pones the primary destination of games.

Here the answer is a little more dicey. The Storm has a large screen and an accelerometer as does the G1. Developers have already used accelerometers to great effect in the iPhone and it is easy to imagine them porting games over to similarly specced phones. If the large screen phone becomes ubiquitous, if everyone has one, then iPhone inspired phones will crush netbooks as gaming machines. In Bruce’s articles he talks about how many people will end up with a cheap netbook.

Just about every student after primary level in the western world is going to have one of these. And it is going to be the only computer used in big quantities everywhere in the developing world. So it is going to sell in the hundreds of millions

Which might be true but millions, even hundreds of millions is nothing compared to 1.15 billion cell phones sold in 2007. Before you have a netbook you’ll have a cell phone. And as the tech gets cheaper the features found in smart phones will become standard on every phone. Once that happens, once every phone is a little computer the question won’t be can a netbook beat the iPhone for gaming, the question will be do you a need a laptop at all?