Nokia's N-Gage tried to be a phone and a game console — and was terrible at both

In 2003, Nokia, then the world's dominant mobile phone maker, launched the N-Gage, a device that combined a mobile phone with a handheld game console. The ambition was to create a new category: a phone that could compete with Nintendo's Game Boy Advance for portable gaming.

The execution was a disaster. The N-Gage's design required users to remove the battery to swap game cards. The speaker was on the side of the device, forcing users to hold it edge-to-face during calls — mocked as 'sidetalking.' The game library was thin, the screen was small, and the device was neither a good phone nor a good game console.

Nokia sold roughly 3 million N-Gage units against a target of 6 million in the first two years, and the device was discontinued in 2005. The case illustrated the danger of forcing two product categories into one device when neither is served well, and of a market leader assuming its brand could carry a product that the market did not want.