Mobile gaming market troubles to continue: Nokia

Global economic slowdown will hurt the mobile gaming market this year and next, after it already suffered an unexpected slump last year, the head of gaming at Nokia said on Wednesday.

"This year is as tough or even tougher. There are hiccups in Western Europe, North America," Jaakko Kaidesoja, head of Nokia's gaming operations told Reuters in an interview.

Kaidesoja said wider economic problems would likely hurt the market also in 2009.

"We expect challenging times to continue. Overall gaming market is likely not growing," he said, but noted some parts of the market — like pre-loaded games, emerging markets, N-Gage and iPhone — would grow.

Nokia, the world's top mobile phone maker, launched its N-Gage gaming service six months ago, but it had so far gained little traction as users have to install the service to their phones themselves.

Kaidesoja said pre-installing the software to phones before they are sold and having local billing system in place, beyond credit card payments, were the keys to reach wider takeup of the service.

Nokia said players have created 400,000 personal profiles on the N-Gage Arena since its launch 6 months ago, and said there were more than 20 million N-Gage capable phones in use, but did not unveil how many people have bought N-Gage games.

He said the firm was also working on touch screen support for N-Gage, and plans to roll out such software next year.