>I imagine the biggest obstacle is that it has nothing to do with their business.

Mobile is far and away the most profitable, highest revenue segment of the gaming market by a huge margin. I can't imagine they don't want a piece of that.

I can, because they really don't seem to. They aren't a publicly traded company beholden to corporate share holders who only value profit. They have a history of behavior which suggests they care about PC gaming and not a heck of a lot else. Arguably they don't even care about the money that much. Did you know you can sell Steam keys on other store fronts and Valve won't even take a cut?

Want and ability are two different things.

Valve released a phenomonal but imperfect update to the Nintendo Switch which has sold about 1% as well. If Sony released a PlayStation Phone tomorrow, and failed to update it for years despite massive interest, then you'd see a SteamPhone.

Not to mention the fact that they might be able to tap into a market that practically doesn't exist anymore: paid mobile games. Like, actual, "I pay you $5-40, you give me a complete game". People are in the habit of buying games on Steam. Half of the top-20 most played games on Steam right now cost money. SteamDeckPhone's sales would probably be disproportionately people who already use Steam on the PC and/or the Steam Deck, so it would be a significantly different audience than the broader mobile gaming market.

* deep, complex, and regulated market. by comparison, not a lot of FCC rules or local 911 rules related to a Steam Deck.

* strong, like STRONG competition from global leaders a la Apple and Samsung

* much deeper requirements for OEM builds, otherwise they're just white labelling hardware. makes sense for the Steam Deck since the offering is the Steam software and compatibility layer.

* they're in the business of software and software support, and some light hardware support viz. the Valve Index and Steam Deck. but the average person looks at their phone 5+ hours a day and defines many of their life functions are dictated by their phone -- e.g. alarm clock, fitness tracker, music, many forms of interpersonal communication. they will drastically need to up their QA, support, and compatibility -- and those have non-trivial costs.

* OEM manufacturing has ruthless margins; they're a private org but still

* non-trivial build and launch costs

I'll just say that these are, point for point, the exact same arguments made 20 years ago against the iPhone coming to market.

Except, iPhones were first to market with an app store. There's a stronghold that Valve would need to break. If Microsoft couldn't do it with the full weight of its developer division and Windows Phone, then it's not likely Valve can.

>There's a stronghold that Valve would need to break.

If only Valve had a world class digital marketplace...