Here in Europe, we tend to think of Nokia as the dominant handset maker… mainly because it is. But in the US, it's a different story, although Nokia is trying to change that.

Anyway, that context is essential to understanding this story, based on some figures released by industry analyst M:Metrics claiming that Nokia is underperforming when it comes to mobile games.

They claim that 20.1 per cent of Nokia owners played a mobile game in February, compared to the market average of 21.4 per cent. And also that only 2.7 per cent of Nokia users downloaded a new game, compared to 3.4 per cent of overall users.

Here's the context: according to M:Metrics, these US figures are because the majority of Nokia handsets sold over there have been low-end and cheap.

"Today, N-Series devices are still quite expensive and are not widely distributed in carrier channels, resulting in low market adoption," senior analyst Mark Donovan tells MocoNews.

Apparently, 30.8 per cent of people with more whizzy Symbian Nokia handsets played a mobile game in February, which indicates a bright future for N-Gage if Nokia can get its N-Series phones into more hands across the pond.

And here too, obviously.