TOKYO--Sony officials said yesterday that the company will boost production of the PSP to keep up with demand, setting a goal to produce as many as three million per month during the 2005 holiday season when sales are highest.

　　This news came from Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi, who spoke Thursday at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan during its Professional Activities Committee conference. "We’ve shipped 800,000 units up to the current point. It’s not a small volume, but it’s not good enough to satisfy the market either," Kutaragi said. He added that 510,000 shipped between the PSP's December 12 launch and the end of the year; the rest shipped during the first three weeks of January.

　　Sony is currently capable of producing 800,000 to 900,000 PSPs per month, but officials have set a goal to make two million units each month by the summer of 2005. That number would ramp up even more during the holidays.

　　According to Bloomberg Japan, Kutaragi also reconfirmed that he wants to add mobile-phone technology to the PSP, in part because its fast processor and massive data capabilities give it a leg up over other phones. "We might have a chance to give a communication function [to the PSP like a third-generation mobile phone] in the not-too-distant future," he said.

　　Kutaragi also told Bloomberg Japan that PSP users who want to download movies for the device will likely have to go through an Internet authentication process to do so. Before that happens, he said SCE hopes to add a Web browser to the handheld. Kutaragi refused to comment on whether a word processor or spreadsheet might be included with the PSP, as some in attendance questioned, saying that such programs would be too difficult to operate when using the handheld.