At its media event in early September, Apple (AAPL) threw down the gauntlet to Nintendo Co. and Sony Corp. (SNE). Dedicated gaming gadgets like the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable “seemed so cool,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of marketing, but “they don’t stack up against the iPod touch.” Now an industry research firm has come out with numbers that back up Apple’s challenge.

A study by DFC Intelligence, released on Friday, predicts that games for the iPhone and iPod touch (an iPhone without the cellular capabilities) will be the principal drivers for growth in the overall portable and mobile gaming market in five years.

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While much of the tech sector has fallen on hard times during the recession, the videogame industry has thrived, as penny-pinching consumers look for lower-cost entertainment. Why go out when a family of four can buy a videogame and get 50 hours of entertainment out of it?

And so the industry gathered in San Francisco for the annual Game Developers Conference to rally its troops. While the PC industry is expecting its second consecutive year of negative unit sales growth, much of the talk at the conference was of 5 to 10 percent annual industry growth, and of the prospects for another record-setter in 2010.

Nintendo was particularly buoyant at the show, where it introduced an Internet-enabled version of its portable DS player that will sell for $169, and announced its 50 millionth Wii shipment.

How’s this for confidence? Nintendo Of America President Reggie Fils-Aimé in an interview ruled out any potential for Nintendo to lower the price of its motion-controlled Wii game console this year. “Why would we?” he said.

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Nintendo Co.’s sales are speeding along faster than a getaway car, shrugging off economic woes as if they were bugs on the windshield.

Its Wii videogame console continues to be sold out in many stores. Sales of its DS handheld console remain hot despite its being a four-year-old product, ancient by game technology standards.

Sales of the Wii Fit exercise game, launched in May, are on track to surpass those of one of 2008’s bestselling titles, Grand Theft Auto IV, by the end of the year, according to projections by Wedbush Morgan Securities.

All that has driven up the Kyoto, Japan, company’s market value to nearly $45 billion, on par with Walt Disney Co.

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With the influx of fresh new gamers, thanks in large part to the popularity of mass-market game machines, the DS and the Wii, more game companies than ever are jumping on the girl gamer bandwagon. Practically every booth at this year’s E3 Media and Business Summit this year had something to offer for female gamers of various demographics.

The breadth of games ranged from Nintendo DS titles like Namco Bandai’s “National Geographic Panda” and Legacy Interactive’s “Zoo Vet Endangered Animals” to Wii titles like Electronic Arts’ “Littlest Pet Shop” … and “Boogie: Superstar.”

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