Nintendo faces investor pressure to get a smartphone strategy

But should the company make games for iPhone and Android, or make its own handset instead?

Mario on iPhone and Android? Unthinkable, or so you'd (un)think. However, Nintendo is facing pressure from some investors to tear up its strategy of ignoring the smartphone market.

"Smartphones are the new battlefield for the gaming industry," Stats Investment Management's fund manager Masamitsu Ohji tells Bloomberg. "Nintendo should try to either buy its way into this platform or develop something totally new."

The article also notes a spike in Nintendo's share price in July this year, when a Pokemon game was announced for iPhone and Android. The shares later slid back after Nintendo said this was entirely down to IP-owner Pokemon Company, rather than any change in its own strategy.

Nintendo is currently in something of a rocky patch, with sluggish sales of its 3DS handheld recently forcing a hefty price cut just months after the device first went on sale.

Could smartphones be the answer? Several options present themselves. Nintendo could make its own phone and release games for that, continuing its console/handheld approach. It could acquire one or more mobile games companies and set them up as a separate division while keeping its key franchises to its existing devices. Or it could bite the bullet and dive into the smartphone publishing market itself, putting Mario and co on the app stores.