Strategy Analytics: Nokia's N-Gage has no target audience
Timo Poropudas
Nordic Wireless Watch - January 19, 2003 at 17:14 GMT
Nokia will find no players for its N-Gage gaming device, predicts Strategy Analytics, the Boston, Massachusetts-based market research company.
In a research note, Nitesh Patel, senior analyst, says that Nokia that will be caught in the classic dilemma of the converged device: playing to two audiences but pleasing neither. The small screen will be a turn off to those used to using dedicated gaming devices while the design won't appeal to a mobile phone buyer.
Patel is anticipating the reception and the device to certain extent since Nokia won't be releasing the product until next month and has kept many details to itself.
He warns that the price of including the features gaming users will rely on – color screen, enhanced processing and storage capabilities – will be more than USS 300. That's three times or more the price of a Nintendo GameBoy, which generally appeals to a younger market. The casual gamer would not be willing to pay the price. He will stick to java and brew-based color games on mobile phones. Casual gamers represent 80% of all the people who play games on mobile phones, Strategy Analytics believes.
The mobile games market represented 1.1% of the total global games market last year compared to the 6.2% share taken by handheld devices, says market research company Informa. It forecasts that will grow to be 11.7% in 2006 compared to 19.3% for consoles and 6.1% for handheld devices.
nordicwirelesswatch.com
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Nokia Game Seen Posing Little Threat to Nintendo GameBoy
Wednesday February 5, 3:59 pm ET
By Dwight Oestricher
NEW YORK -- Nintendo Co. has a long lead in the hand-held video game market and isn't likely to lose its top spot in the face of new competition from Nokia Corp. .
"It's premature to suggest that (Nokia's game) would pose any threat to the huge installed base of Nintendo's GameBoy," said RBC Capital Markets analyst Stewart Halpern.
The mobile communications company said Wednesday that it plans to have its N- Gage portable game console, which also doubles as a wireless phone, available in five markets, including the U.S., by the fourth quarter of 2003.
Activision Inc. (NasdaqNM:ATVI - News) , THQ Inc. (NasdaqNM:THQI - News) , and Sega Corp. are some of the game makers who said they will develop software for N-Gage. Nokia said it will charge a fee on every game published by a third-party.
It wasn't clear as to how many units of N-Gage would be rolled out on its debut or how many game titles would be available. Either way, the newcomer has its work cut out for it against the more than 140 million GameBoy systems produced since its debt in 1989. In 2002, the Japan video game maker sold about 15 million GameBoy Advance systems, seven million of those in the U.S., UBS Warburg analyst Michael Wallace said.
Nintendo plans to release its latest version of the game, GameBoy Advance SP, in the U.S. in March, a month after it hits the Japanese market. The GameBoy Advance SP features a front light screen. By mid-2003, there will be a total of about 350 games in the GameBoy Advance library.
"It will be tough for Nokia to get something like that off the ground because Nintendo has a lock on the hand-held business," Mr. Wallace said. Nintendo will have "more handheld units out there and more proprietary games."
With the added attraction of a phone, Nokia's N-Gage should be able to attract an older audience that Nintendo no longer courts, Forrester Research analyst Paul Jackson said in a research note. A portion of young, high-spending Europeans may also want the N-Gage for games and messaging, he said. However, the device won't make a dent in Nintendo's dominance, Mr. Jackson said, adding that N-Gage probably won't be able to match GameBoy's low price because of the technology involved.
The ability to play games with multiple players over a wireless network is a unique, interesting concept of the N-Gage, pointed out RBC Capital Markets analyst Michael Walkley, who said Nokia should make money on the game side. He added, however, that the device "probably won't be a big driver of new growth in the near term, but it will be interesting to see how consumers respond."
biz.yahoo.com
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