Nokia spreads the N-Gage love to business phones

Nokia has decided the mobile world needs more gaming - so it's turning the N-Gage from handset to platform and adding new gaming components into a selection of its smart phones.

The Series 60 smart phones, to be launched with N-Gage capabilities, will be on the market in the first half of next year, Nokia said.

According to the Finnish mobile giant, the decision to bring the capabilities from N-Gage on to other phones will enable the company to target a wider customer base with gaming.

Gerard Weiner, director and GM of Nokia Games, said the handset maker expected to sell 25 million smart phones in the course of this year and predicted that figure would grow to 250 million by 2008.

Getting the high-end users into gaming could prove to be a good move for the phone firm, as analyst house Informa predicts the mobile gaming market will be worth $11.2bn by the end of the decade, up from $2.6bn this year.

And online multiplayer gaming - the kind Nokia is targeting with its N-Gage expansion - will boom, accounting for 20.5 per cent of global mobile gaming revenues by 2010, Informa said.