Phone giant Nokia took mobile pundits by surprise on Monday - by entering the games industry. Taking aim at Nintendo's GameBoy Advance, Nokia unveiled a mobile phone it hopes will double as a decent games console, along with six other new mobile devices.
At its annual mobile internet conference in Munich, Nokia showed the N-Gage - its first mobile phone that also allows consumers to play quality games, which are stored on memory cards, on a colour screen.
The device, to be introduced in February, is a direct challenge to Japan's Nintendo, which is expected to sell 12m units of its GameBoy Advance across the globe this year. Nokia said it would also become a games publisher.
"Nintendo is the one owning this market," said Nokia's executive vice president for mobile phones, Anssi Vanjoki. "The market is underdeveloped." He said Nokia's strength in the fiercely competitive games market would come from its position as a wireless player. The new device will allow multiple gamers to play against each other over short-range Bluetooth connections, or across the mobile phone network.
The announcement, the first major push from any mobile phone maker to cater for the games market, took analysts by surprise. "They've stolen a march on Microsoft," said Neil Mawston, at market research group Strategy Analytics. But he added that Nokia still needed strong games to succeed. Nokia said Sega will develop games for the devices.
Vanjoki also showed five traditional colour screen and camera-phones, plus a fold-away model with a keyboard.
Nokia phone launches are closely watched because of the company's dominant position in the wireless industry, supplying more than a third of all phones sold to consumers worldwide.
The new phones, which also included a small and expensive cameraphone and a low-cost entry level model, further extended Nokia's product portfolio, already the broadest in the industry. "We're convinced we're going to gain market share," Vanjoki said. Some analysts predict the company, because of its unwillingness to compromise on designs or brand for mobile network operators, may lose market share to more flexible rivals.
The company unveiled the 6800 model, which comes with a colour display, supports the Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) and Java technology and has a cover that opens up into a full keyboard. It will go on sale early next year.
The 7250 colour screen fashion phone, which has a built-in digital camera, will go on sale in the same period, as will the 5100, the 8910i and the 2100. Nokia will start shipping the 6100 model, also with a colour display, by the end of this year.
Nokia also unveiled a set of external speakers that can be attached to a phone to give stereo sound, as well as a cellphone headset with a tiny digital camera attached.
Vanjoki was upbeat about customer desire for new, much more powerful mobile phones.
He said demand for its first cameraphone on sale, the 7650, was outstripping supply. He added that Nokia had already delivered more than 1m devices to telecoms operators and was on course to deliver 3m by the new year.
The company also revealed it expected to ship 50-100m colour screen devices next year and hopes to extend its leading global handset market share. Chief executive Jorma Ollila said more than half of the firm's phones sold next year would use MMS.
But analyst Mawston, who applauded the new products, said Nokia still needed a clamshell product if it wanted to stop Samsung's march.
The South Korean company advanced to a market share of between 10 and 11% in the third quarter of this year - aided by the popularity of clamshell designs in Asia.
