Like all emerging technologies, the mobile gaming industry faces some obstacles. Unlike the PC and console markets where there are a few key platforms for developers to target, the mobile world has massive fragmentation and a lack of homogeneous targets for game developers, negatively impacting the market.
Fragmentation raises game development costs. To make a game successful, upwards of 600 handsets must be targeted to deliver a game on a global scale 
to major operators. Additionally, the return on investment is potentially poor because of the lack of footprint available.
There is also an issue with the actual capabilities of each individual platform. While seemingly similar, each handset platform has subtle and often major differences in screen size, heap memory, IO, keypad layout and connectivity.
Additionally, implementation of some of the underlying software, such as particular Java Specification 
Request (JSRs) or the performance of Java Virtual Machines (JVMs), can lead to the same game on “similar” platforms performing radically differently. This can lead to user dissatisfaction and disappointment with the genre.
Another challenge is the limitations of Java-based platforms. Though Java is perfectly capable of delivering an excellent, casual mobile gaming experience, it is not ideal for high-performance mobile gaming. Additionally, price points for Java-type games are “fixed” at $3 to 5 max, varying somewhat between various regions. To make mobile game investments more enticing, publishers must achieve a $10 to 15 price point.
There is an expanding group of gamers who want to see console-like quality experiences on handsets and are willing to pay a significant premium for it. The industry must make advancements to capitalise on the market potential. An increase in 3D acceleration on phones and the experience quality will advance these offerings.
Putting the “mobile” in gaming
In order to make mobile gaming a more viable proposition for the industry are a range of standards which seek to address some of the issues facing the industry.
Khronos Group
The Khronos Group has long been the standards body of choice when dealing with graphics-associated issues. It has a range of working groups that have or are developing specifications to address all areas of game development. To give you a flavor of the activities here is a short overview of what is available today:
OpenGL ES1.x – A royalty-free, cross-platform API for full-function 2D and 3D graphics on embedded systems, which is a subset of OpenGL 1.3 graphics library for mobile applications. The latest revision of the specification is 1.1.
Open GL ES2.0 – This ushers in the era of shaders and pixel programmability. Developer tools at this juncture will be more akin to those they use on traditional gaming consoles. This takes gaming into the realms of photo realism.
OpenVG – A standardisation of 2D graphics efforts, such as scalable vector graphics, which are targeted at 2D gaming and user interfaces. This enables more complex UIs with overlay and transitional effects.
OpenKODE - This will bring an equivalent of DirectX to the mobile phone and will kick start higher end gaming much like happened on PC.
The Mobile Gaming Architecture Initiative program involves 14 leading companies spanning the mobile gaming ecosystem – from silicon providers, to operating system and middleware providers, to game developers, publishers and operators. Since its launch, this initiative has since moved into the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) to expand the involvement of the entire industry.
The OMA Gaming Services Working Group’s charter is to help reduce fragmentation and to increase the stability of underlying games platforms for developers. The group is outlining device categories, indicating to developers a base-level set of capabilities that devices in that category are guaranteed to support. The idea is to support three to four device categories, each giving a defined minimum level of capabilities that is expressed in terms of a definable difference in user experience. For instance, they could choose to target a “Cat 2” device that incorporates certain memory, screen and other features, driving more confident investments in that platform knowing porting costs will be dramatically reduced.
There are also extensions to Java that enable it to more easily hooking into OpenGL ES to enable Java games to leverage underlying 3D graphics acceleration making for better, faster and superior looking mobile games.
Mobile gaming mainstream
Industry efforts like those mentioned above will yield better games, shorter development times, more homogeneous platforms, less porting overhead and a superior user experience, which will drive an expanded market for mobile gaming. Money freed up by reducing porting and other development costs can be reallocated into marketing and gameplay investments, making it easier for games to be discovered, reviewed, traded and recommended. Ultimately, it is this effort that will drive mobile gaming to its fullest potential in the mainstream market.
Bryce Johnstone, manager of the OMAP developer network at Texas Instruments