The Fleet Assembles...
The N-Gage platform is quite a weird beast: it isn't based around one device or even one kind of device, but a whole range of phones aimed at radically different audiences, sold at radically different prices. Nokia's strategy isn't to sell gaming devices, they are not in the console business. Their aim is to sell mobile phones, and then sell games to the people who bought the phones.
In theory there are already tens of millions of N-Gage-compatible devices out there, but most people who own such devices don't have the N-Gage application installed. Although they could all install N-Gage manually, the reality is that most people don't know about the platform, and don't know how to install it manually either.
The only realistic way Nokia can produce a real userbase of millions for N-Gage is to include the application built into compatible phones from day one. The only models to have it built in from day one so far have been the N79, N85 and N96. What they need to do is launch more phones with N-Gage on board.
In fact that's exactly what Nokia is doing in 2009. Over the next few months the number of compatible devices is set to expand to at least eighteen models. All of these new models will be N-Gage-compatible from day one, and they will ship with N-Gage built into their firmware along with preloaded demos of the games.
On top of that, there are almost certainly more N-Gage phones for 2009 which are currently unannounced.
To put this all more visually...
N-Gage phones that launched WITHOUT N-Gage on board:
N-Gage phones that launched WITH N-Gage on board:
Upcoming N-Gage phones that will launch WITH N-Gage on board:
You can find out the technical details of all Nokia phones on the official Forum Nokia website.