In a report released back in May 2004 by Juipter Research, a division of Jupitermedia Corporation (the parent company of this website), researchers predicted that the addressable audience of portable gamers will nearly double from 23 million to 43 million by 2009. That's a lot of thumbs connected to a lot hands that could be forking over a lot of money to game developers, publishers and providers.

Joining traditional gamers on devices like Nintendo's GameBoy Advance will be players in a new, Jupiter-defined "hybrid" category, which includes TapWave's Zodiac and Nokia's N-Gage platform (see top image), as well as those who play games heavily on smartphones, traditional PDAs or cell phones.

The Game Initiative, a producer of conferences and events for the computer and video game industry, is holding a conference, aptly titled the Mobile Game Conference, devoted to--you guessed it--the mobile gaming market. The Mobile Game Conference will coincide with its established Austin Game Conference, scheduled for September 9-10 in Austin, Texas.

Austin Game Conference Executive Director, Christopher V. Sherman said "the Mobile Game Conference carries forward The Game Initiative's mission to provide superior information to game industry professionals, information that can be immediately applied to building better games and better game companies."

According to Game Initiative’s promotional material, the conference will feature a virtual who's who of the mobile gaming industry. Speakers from over twenty participating wireless carriers, game publishers, device manufacturers, platform operators, middleware providers and developers--including Sprint, Nokia, Vindigo and Sony Computer Entertainment--will address conferees in ten breakout sessions over two days. Topics include The State of the Game: Mobile Games Landscape 2004, Major Mobile Game Platforms: State of Technology, and The Mobile Value Chain.

Other Developments in Mobile Gaming

Sony attracted a lot of attention at E3 when it announced it would enter the niche currently dominated by Nintendo's GameBoy with Sony PlayStation Portable. Not to be outdone, Nintendo has a new device codenamed DS that features two displays up its sleeve.

Nokia's "hybrid" N-Gage smartphone received lukewarm sales and negative reviews when it was released late last year. And while a new model, N-Gage QD, is a big improvement, it still lacks in significant areas (read our review). Tapwave's Zodiac, an excellent gaming handheld (read our review), could only be bought from the company's website until recently, limiting its exposure.

All three major portable operating systems, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Palm, have been updated this year with one of the chief goals being the creation of mobile devices that deliver better audio, video and gaming.