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Nokia Is New Game in Town


Feb 02, 2003 (Sunday Business - Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News via COMTEX)
-- Mobile phone giant Nokia will unveil its long-awaited games handsets this
week. Instead of the outdated fare available on current mobiles, the N-Gage
phones are understood to run the latest offerings from producers such as Sega.

While details of the handsets have been a closely guarded secret in Nokia's
Finnish research centres, reports say the company has teams of developers
working on its own high-quality three-dimensional games.

Consumer reaction to this week's launch is critical for the entire mobile
industry as well as for Nokia chief Jorma Ollila. Using mobiles as games
terminals allows the industry to reach into another consumer electronics sector.

According to undisclosed research carried out in Scandinavia over recent years,
there is a relatively low ceiling on the kind of monthly tariff users are
prepared to pay for phone services, no matter how advanced.

However, the industry may be able to boost revenues by crossing over into games.
According to a report released last week by specialist mobile technology
consultant Strand Consult, the revenue from mobile games and entertainment is
set to rise from E44.7 million ($48.3M, UKpound 29.5 million) in 2002 to E3.2
billion in 2005.

According to Strand, this sharp increase is based on the introduction of phones
with colour screens, such as the Nokia handsets, that will have similar
capabilities to Game Boys, the popular handheld consoles.

Mobile phones doubling as gaming devices have a real advantage over products
such as Game Boys as they can use the mobile industry's new high-speed data
networks such as GPRS and 3G to download the newest games straight on to their
phones.

One advantage of this technology is that the same game could be sold in
different ways. The user could, for example, pay to use the game for a day, a
week, a month or for an unlimited period.

Network operators such as Vodafone are also predicting that dedicated gamers
will start taking advantage of high-speed mobile phone networks to engage in
multiplayer games, where they can test their skills against other mobile gamers.

The level of success of Nokia's N-Gage phones will indicate how realistic the
industry's predictions of a gaming revenue bonanza really are.


By Tony Glover
To see more of Sunday Business, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.sundaybusiness.co.uk
UKpound preceding a numeral refers to the United Kingdom's pound sterling.

(c) 2003, Sunday Business, London. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business
News.

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