Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (
"Mobile phone games have become an increasing important service after ringtone and ringback tone downloading," Roger Chen (
Of Far EasTone's income from multimedia services, short messaging service accounts for nearly half of the share, ringtone and ringback tone downloading make up 25 percent, while gaming contributes more than 12.5 percent, Chen said.
The growth rate of the gaming sector, however, has skyrocketed, he said.
The frequency of game downloading for the nation's second-largest mobile-phone carrier has jumped fourfold or fivefold this summer from last year, Chen said, adding that it could replace ringtone and ringback tone as the second-highest income earner among its multimedia services.
Starting on Aug. 15, Far EasTone subscribers can download a puzzle game designed by the main characters in Maple Story for NT$70 (US$2.13) per download plus transmission charge.
After puzzle games, four Maple Story role-playing games will be ready for download every other month.
The game can be downloaded to handsets that support Java technology.
The complexity of game levels offered will be much lower than those of the PC version, given the technological limitation of mobile phones, said William Chen (陳威光), chief operating officer of Gamania.
Mobile phone games are set to take off worldwide, and Taiwan is the right market to grow the business given a high handset penetration rate, an advanced network infrastructure and a fondness for gaming, William Chen said.
As the expansion of Taipei's Mass Rapid Transit System is expected to encourage more people to move out of the city, mobile games could serve as a good time killer for commuters, as in the case in Japan, he said.
The mobile phone games market is forecast to hit US$9.6 billion by 2011, with half of the share coming from Asia, he said, citing statistics from market research firm Gartner Inc.
Besides Maple Story, Gamania will put more of its famous games on the mobile network to attract more PC game subscribers, as well as reinforce customer loyalty to the game series, he said.
The PC version of Maple Story, for example, has attracted more than 6 million gamers, who will very likely play it on their handsets as well, he said.
Gamania is working on allowing gamers to play the same game across the two platforms, he said.
For example, points or gadgets earned on a player's cellphone could be transferred to his or her PC game account and vice versa, he said.
RSS