Cellular phone game is the new buzzword in the world's fast-growing wireless business. Cellular phone game is a key element in operator's and content developer's strategies to develop new, high-value wireless revenue streams, beyond basic voice services and simple text messaging. Propelled by end-user demand, cellular phone games are growing quickly as an increasing number of consumers take advantage of wireless mobility to enjoy entertainment on the go.

The growth of the cellular phone game sector has attracted publishers, developers, animators, musicians, and content providers. Cellular phone gaming is also stimulating the development of innovative business models.

Software services are a booming business in the world, and cellular phone games are emerging as a key market in the next big wave of mobile multimedia-- both for software developers and consumers. Cellular phone games are also emerging as a leading entertainment option.

It is also projected that as many as 78.6 million people will be playing cellular phone games by 2009, and cellular phone game downloads will have increased more than tenfold from 2004 levels.

Cellular Phone Game Evolution

Cellular phone games have come a long way since 'Snake' was first deployed on wireless handsets in 1997. A recent study revealed that, at present, 6.5 percent of U.S. wireless subscribers are extremely interested in purchasing cellular phone game services. This level of interest clearly identifies cellular phone game as a niche opportunity for wireless carriers, application developers and content producers. Unlike with other emerging mobile multimedia services, such as video and music, consumers interested in cellular phone games do not necessarily match the classic early-adopter profile.

Implementation of Cellular Phone Games

A number of different technologies, listed below, are used for cellular phone games:-

Embedded Cellular Phone Games

Some cellular phone games are programmed to run natively on a phone's chipset, installed on the phone at the factory, and shipped with it. Snake, available on many Nokia phones for more than four years, is the most famous example of such a cellular phone game. New embedded cellular phone games cannot be installed by the consumer, and they are becoming less prevalent.

SMS Cellular Phone Games

Short Message Service (SMS) is used to deliver short text messages from one phone to another. SMS cellular phone games are played by sending a message to a phone number that corresponds to the game provider's server, which receives the messages, performs some processing, and returns a message to the player with the results.

SMS is not a particularly good technology for cellular phone games, because it is dependent on text entry by the user, and thus is, in essence, a command-line environment. Although the deployment of Multimedia Message Service (MMS) technology makes message-based cellular phone games more appealing, this is still not a great gameplay.

Browsing Cellular Phone Games

Every phone includes a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) browser. WAP is, in essence, a static browsing medium, optimized for the small form factors and low bandwidth of mobile phones. A WAP cellular phone game is played by going to the game provider's URL, and downloading the required cellular phone game.

WAP offers a friendlier interface than SMS. But it is a static browsing medium; little or no processing can be done on the phone itself, and all cellular phone gameplay must be over the network, with all processing performed by a remote server.

Phones will continue to contain WAP browsers, and developers may find WAP useful to deliver more detailed help or rules to players than can be contained in a cellular phone game application, since most cellular phone games are still subject to strict memory limits.

J2ME based Cellular Phone Games

Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) is a form of the Java language that is optimized for small devices such as mobile phones and PDAs. J2ME vastly improves the ability of mobile phones to support cellular phone games. It allows far better control over interface of cellular phone games than either SMS or WAP. It allows sprite animation, and can connect over the air network to a remote server.

Because of the widespread and growing deployment of Java-enabled phones, it is a natural for cellular phone game development today. Cellular phone games initially developed for the large J2ME installed base can be recoded into other proprietary languages.

C++ based Cellular Phone Games

A cellular phone game can also be developed in C++, a language that compiles to native machine code. Compiled languages in general offer better control over UI of cellular phone games, direct access to the phone's hardware, and greater speed for the same processing power when compared to an interpreted language. Cellular phone game development in C++ enables rich, high-performance cellular phone games.