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Nokia tries to conquest mobile gaming with N-Gage QD and PRICE DUMPING
April 20, 2004;
Old N-Gage is now available for about 140 Euro (160 USD) without contract (without SIM card and without subscription) and the new N-Gage QD will be even cheaper. Both have built-in Bleutooth and Symbian OS. This is nothing but price dumping!

The new N-Gage QD is like old N-Gage minus MP3 player, minus FM radio, minus USB cable connection to PC, plus possibility to hot-swap MMC cards (without the need to pull out the battery), plus possibility to talk normally (without the need to use "taco style" talking).

Nokia not only is investing many millions of Euro/dollars in subsidizing of N-Gage devices, but also in new software titles for this game deck! So if somebody likes to buy Symbian device with Bluetooth (for Bluetooth multiplayer gaming) and without built-in camera then N-Gage is the cheapest offering! Unfortunately Microsoft, that is not producing hardware (and thus cannot subsidize price of smartphones) will have it difficult to compete with such strategy of Nokia...

Interestingly apart from developing of N-Gage handsets (old N-Gage and new N-Gage QD), Nokia is also developing platform for muliplayer gaming : N-Gage Arena. In other words: Nokia is very serious about mobile gaming, while Microsoft (at this moment yet) totally ignores it... and targets mainly professional and business customers with Microsoft powered cell phones...

Please note: in year 2005 Sony is about to release their mobile gaming console, that will have built-in Wi-Fi and high resolution display, as well as a drive for special discs of size over 1GB. This new upcoming mobile console can destroy N-Gage, but certainly due to the price dumping of Nokia, the N-Gage can be a way how Nokia (indirectly) fights Microsoft!

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