Mobile gaming firms eye Nokia, Apple boost in 2009

* Mobile gaming firms see market boost next year

* New platforms to solve mobile games key merchandising problem

* Nokia's N-gage takeup still small

By Tarmo Virki

HELSINKI, Oct 10 (Reuters) - Mobile gaming companies say they will book few new sales from Nokia's N-Gage phones or Apple's (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) iPhone, but are betting on a market boost next year as more phones of these kinds are taken up by consumers.

Nokia (NOK1V.HE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) 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.

What gaming industry executives hoped for was a similar takeup, as with the App store on iPhone, which gave users easy access to buy new games or other software.

While Apple has talked about a total of 10 million phones on the market, Nokia's leading position in cellphones gave it the potential to reach an audience at least 10-times larger.

The mobile gaming market suffered an unexpected slump last year, with many game developers and analysts pointing to telecom operators' lack of investment in marketing.

"Merchandising has been a primary pain point for the mobile games industry, and the introduction of new platforms gives consumers a really simple way to discover and download games," said Greg Ballard, chief executive of Glu Mobile (GLUU.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), one of the largest mobile gaming firms.

N-Gage was a software platform that allowed one game, without special programming, to be used across many phone models, and was one of the cornerstones of Nokia's new services strategy.

"In many ways the N-Gage design reflects an insider's view of how to solve the merchandising challenges that we have all seen in this business for so long. It was like a bunch of us had gotten together and said, 'Here, this is how it should be done,'" Ballard said.

Nokia aimed to ease the mobile gaming industry's key challenges: making them easy to find and buy. It was directly on the phone's home screen and offered free trial versions of games.

"All the right pieces are in place from our perspective. We're very excited about this platform. It is very difficult for this not to be successful," said Electronic Art's Javier Ferreira, head of mobile publishing in Europe.

Electronic Arts was the largest mobile games provider after its $680 million acquisition of Jamdat in 2006.  Continued...