Handset maker Nokia Inc. has selected mobile video games developer Gameloft for the launch of its N-Gage platform.

Customized for Nokia, N-Gage will be available in compatible Nokia Nseries and other S60 third-edition devices.

"Nokia has been a great partner of ours for quite a long time," said Gonzague de Vallois, senior vice president of publishing at Gameloft, New York. "We supported them during the first N-Gage launch and it makes sense for us to continue our commitment by developing games for this new platform.

"We believe that the future of mobile games is in these new advanced platforms," he said. "Nokia has a 4 percent market share of the phones business, so the opportunity is huge."

Six Gameloft games out of 18 will be available on the launch date. The six games are Brain Challenge, Dogz, Midnight Pool 3D, Block Breaker Deluxe, Asphalt 3: Street Rules and Brothers in Arms 3D.

"We expect the Internet will certainly grow as a mobile distribution channel and consumers will gravitate to what's most comfortable for them in terms of accessing games, so we are focusing on multiple options," said Camilla Pagliaroli, media relations manager at Nokia, Espoo, Finland. "All N-Gage-compatible devices will have USB cables and many will support WLAN."

In addition to Internet and wireless games-download capabilities, Nokia will also be embedding games in devices for purchase. Nokia expects that publishers will find other ways to bundle N-Gage games for purchase with other content.

Gameloft is a leading international publisher and developer of video games for mobile phones. The company creates games for mobile handsets with Java, BREW or Symbian technology.

It is predicted that the number of game-enabled handsets will exceed 4 billion in 2011, according to Gameloft.

Gameloft has offices in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

"Games are an important element of entertainment," Ms. Pagliaroli said. "Forrester Research says the mobile gaming market will grow to $10 billion by 2010.

"Nokia sees that convergence is key, and that includes experiencing N-Gage via the N-Gage Web portal on your PC where you can interact seamlessly with the mobile N-Gage community or purchase new games and load them onto your N-Gage-compatible device," she said.