The companies believe the extension of the games terminal through a merger with the mobile phone into a multiplayer environment could be one of the most successful and lucrative forms of mobile communications — although it may also be one of the most banal.

If the trio's proposed game platform triumphs over competing efforts, the companies said the plaform would benefit mobile operators and games developers by reducing the number of platforms that need to be supported — and would thereby benefit games players by providing a "rich, interactive, multiplayer game experience."

However, Nokia, the world's leading mobile phone handset producer and one of the few technology companies that is not yet predicting major losses and job cuts, is a notable exception from the team. Similarly, the Ericsson-Motorola-Siemens team does not include Nintendo Co. Ltd. (Kyoto, Japan) the developer of the Game Boy, the leading portable games terminal brand.

Metrowerks Inc. (Austin, Texas), a wholly owned subsidiary of Motorola, has been selected to provide support for the proposed platform through the CodeWarrior development system. And although no information was provided about an operating system for such a games system, Symbian Ltd. (London), the developer of the EPOC operating system, could benefit as it is a joint venture between Ericsson and Motorola together with Nokia, Matsushita and Psion plc.

The ability to download and run Java applets is expected to be a major part of any future gaming platform, and many technology-supply companies are already well advanced in developing intellectual property for mobile games platforms.

The three companies said that their early work would concentrate on agreeing to open application programming interfaces and on a software development kit which could then be licensed to software developers. The three companies expect to have specifications available in the third quarter of 2001.

The three companies said that once their game platform was "formally launched," they planned to work with other companies in the areas of mobile phone and infrastructure vendors, technology providers, games developers, games service providers and mobile phone service providers.

"We believe that offering compelling mobile games will act as an effective catalyst for the mobile Internet market as a whole, so we are convinced that operators, as well as the game developing community, will benefit greatly from this initiative," said Jan Lindgren, vice president of Ericsson Internet Applications. "Our aim is to promote an open approach to the mobile games market by supporting current and future standards, and by collaborating with all interested industry players."