HELSINKI, FINLAND: The take-up of Nokia's N-Gage gaming service has accelerated since the top cell phone maker has started to pre-install it in new mid- and higher-end phone models, a spokesman said on Tuesday.

Nokia's mobile gaming push has encountered major challenges over the years, with consumers shunning its dedicated gaming phones, and with its new online gaming service, opened last year, yet to move beyond a niche audience.

Nokia has not unveiled user numbers for its gaming service, but the spokesman said almost 1 million players have created personal profiles on the N-Gage community pages.

In late-October Nokia said players had created 400,000 personal profiles.

Consumers initially had to download the service themselves, limiting the take-up to dedicated gamers, but over the year it has started to sell many new models with pre-installed gaming service.

Nokia aims eventually to sell all digital content through its new online Ovi store but will keep a separate N-Gage gaming service, at least for now, a Nokia executive told Reuters in an interview earlier this month.