While the gaming industry is busy celebrating today over the Golden Joysticks awards, there’s one company which is looking at its gaming division with a rather sour expression – Nokia. They’ve never had much luck with their N-Gage gaming platform, whether it be N-Gage devices which launched in 2003, or just their N-Gage downloads store, but finally it looks like they’re set to scrap it completely.

Speaking to Mobile Entertainment, Nokia’s director of X-Media Solutions, Media & Games, Mark Ollila said “We are not releasing any more games on N-Gage, although the store – the ability to buy N-Gage games – will remain open until at least September 2010, and the N-Gage service will run through to the end of 2010.”

 Classic example of a corporation cutting off one of its arms, but letting it bleed slowly until all the blood’s dried and crusty? Yes, but Nokia’s quick to point out that “The message is that Ovi Store is the place to find and purchase mobile games. It’s our one-stop shop for games.”

 While N-Gage has been struck off the list, Nokia still has high hopes for its Ovi app store. Facing impressive competition from the likes of Apple and Android, Nokia is still “committed to mobile gaming overall”, but it’s obvious that instead of rolling out a download store purely for games in early 2008, they should’ve looked further afield and launched Ovi there and then

via Nokia N-Gage gaming platform to be closed | T3 magazine.

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Microsoft has lost market share over the past year, much of that to Apple’s iPhone. It also faces stiff competition from RIM Blackberry, Symbian, and Google Android. It’s a tough market and Windows Mobile currently holds only about 10 percent of it.

Some have predicted that the new Windows Mobile will be essentially DOA (dead on arrival) due to a combination of waning interest in the Windows Mobile platform and the fact that an even bigger release, Windows Mobile 7, is expected less than six months later. I think it is premature to expect Microsoft to concede the mobile operating system war, but I also think that winning it should not be Microsoft’s ultimate goal.

via Windows Mobile 6.5 Won’t Fix Microsoft’s Mobile Woes – Business Center – PC World.