HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia began the roll-out of its "N-Gage" gaming service and "Share on Ovi" media sharing site on Tuesday as falling handset prices spur the worlds largest cell phone maker to expand into mobile Internet services.
Nokia, which made 40 percent of all cell phones sold in the last quarter of 2007, is the first handset maker to move strongly into the content space.
Millions of users have downloaded songs, video clips, programs or documents since the company launched Mosh, a file sharing site, last August.
"These are the first steps on the long journey towards becoming a competitor in the Web 2.0 services space," said CCS Insight research director Ben Wood.
"It now faces the challenge of building awareness for these and other services with consumers who have already gravitated towards established web brands such as Google."
Nokia delayed the opening of its N-Gage gaming service twice last year due to delays in software testing.
On Tuesday it opened it to owners of its N81 multimedia phones around the world, asking them for feedback before opening the service to a wider audience.
"Im very positive on N-Gage. This is exactly what this market needs when its clear that some of the operators have thrown in the towel," said Ilkka Paananen, head of game development at mobile gaming firm Digital Chocolate.
Mobile gaming market suffered an unexpected slump last year, with many game developers pointing to telecom operators lack of interest in investing in marketing games.
"If N-Gage is on the main menu of a Nokia phone, people will click on it and tell also their friends -- there is a large potential there," Paananen said.
Nokias social networking site "Share on Ovi" allows people to share photos and videos and is built on technology acquired last year with the U.S. firm Twango, a spokesman for the company said, adding the firm was doing live testing of the service.
Revenues from running social networking sites such as News Corps MySpace, Facebook and Bebo on cell phones are expected to rise sharply in coming years as so-called "user-generated content," once a niche concept, starts to win mass appeal.
Research firm Informa expects revenues from mobile social networks to grow to at least 29 billion by 2012 from 1.5 billion in 2006.
(Reporting by Tarmo Virki; additional reporting by Niclas Mika in Amsterdam; editing by Jason Neely)
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