Nokia's next target: gaming platforms

Stuart Corner
Monday, 27 November 2006 16:50

IT Industry - Deals

Not content with making noises about cellphones dominating the cameraphone, MP3 player and videophone markets, Nokia is now ramping up its gaming offerings.

Nokia has announced the results of a six-country survey of mobile gaming usage and claims to be "re-defining the mobile gaming experience." Starting in 2007, Nokia says it will allow consumers to "easily find, buy, play and manage great quality mobile games on upcoming Nokia Nseries multimedia computers and other Nokia S60 devices."

Consumers will be able to connect to the N-Gage Arena, (www.n-gage.com) Nokia's mobile, global gaming community. Nokia says it is working with games publishers, including Electronic Arts and Gameloft, to deliver a broad portfolio of "exciting, high quality games."

In May Nokia launched a new mobile gaming platform  and announced a tie-up with leading game developer Taito which began publishing connected mobile gaming content for Nokia's SNAP (Scaleable Network Application Package) mobile platform for the connected Java mobile gaming community.

Nokia commissioned Nielsen Entertainment to conduct research into mobile gaming in six countries worldwide. One hour interviews were carried out with 1800 participants across China, Germany, India, Spain, Thailand and the United States.