SAN FRANCISCO - Huge growth in the mobile gaming industry has led to an expensive and ever-expanding problem, as each game must be adapted to all available handsets.

The number of unique handsets is staggering ? over 700 worldwide by most estimates ? and a new handset is introduced every few days. Making all the necessary adaptations ? referred to as porting ? does not come cheap, often costing twice as much as the original game.

Coming to the rescue is Sameer Bhatia, founder of San Francisco - based Octane Technologies. The company provides porting solutions to the industry's top game developers, including Gamelofe, Superscape, and RealNetworks.

Closely held Octane does not disclose revenues, but Bhatia believes the start-up is one of the fastest -growing businesses in the industry due to its strong offshore presence.

"Our global development operations allow us to hire firstrate talent to tackle the challenges facing the industry," he said. "Given the sheer brainpower in our Indian operations, we've been able to create innovative approaches to ease the pain of porting that no one thought possible."

The company has been featured in wireless publications includying: RCR Wireless, Wireless Week and CNET's Wireless Gaming Review.

"Mobile Gaming requires a new way of thinking for developers and publishers," Bhatia said, "which has created immense opportunities for those of us willing to innovate and challenge the status quo. We're seeing a tremendous surge in demand for our services from game publishers, which are all competing tooth and and nail to have the best games and widest footpring in the market."

According to the Wireless World Forum, the mobile game market will climb to $1.93 bilion in 2006 - nearly double its current size.

Worldwide, game publishers are racing to capture this expanding market, which as quickly become the fifth major platform for games after PCs, consoles, handheld comptuers and the Internet, according to market research firm Yankee Group.

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