The handset maker, Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK), and social gaming firm Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA), are coming together to make popular games ‘Draw Something’ and ‘Zynga Poker’ available on Nokia’s Asha Touch phone models sometime this year.
According to the blog of the Finnish phone maker, the games will be freely downloaded from Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK)’s store, and this is a step forward in the partnership announced by the two companies several months ago. Nokia’s Asha was recently introduced by the troubled handset maker, to capture the lost ground to players like Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (LON:BC94). Nokia’s Asha already supports games from EA, Gameloft, Rovio, and NAMCO BANDAI.
Bryan Biniak, VP & GM of Nokia’s Global Partnering & Application Development sector, said in the blog “It’s great to expand our offering of Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA) games to deliver more blockbuster titles across our portfolio of mobile devices, giving consumers great choice and tremendous value. With premium design, powerful hardware, and outstanding gaming capabilities, we’re redefining what consumers expect from today’s feature phone experience.”
According to the research firm, Gartner, a feature phone is an important weapon in the arsenal for Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) to boost its smartphone sales. Despite the marginally shrinking market for social gaming on mobile devices, Nokia with its new move, could create a space for itself in such a niche segment.
Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) will be hoping that introducing ‘Draw Something’ and other old games could help it attract consumers for its Asha phone range, which has become quite popular in emerging markets, due to its reasonable price tag. Boosted by the performance from the new models, for the second quarter Finnish company reported a decline of only 1 percent in feature phone sales. Feature phone sales volume grew two percent, to 73.5 billion units.
Social gaming space has been in the news this month, with Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) announcing its plans to enter the market, by setting up its own “Amazon Game Studio”.
Nokia’s store recently achieved the five billion downloads milestone. From January to April 2012, 42 percent of all the contents downloaded from Nokia stores were from Series 40 devices, including the Asha Touch range. Till now, apps from more than 500 Nokia developers have registered more than one million downloads and India Games, while Pico Brothers and Inode have crossed 100 million downloads.
