Nokia’s Asha feature phone range – one of the few high points in the company’s recent Q3 results – has benefitted greatly from the rise of mobile gaming, the company has revealed.

The company said that making 40 EA games free for Asha phones earlier this year had helped to establish the handset’s gaming reputation, with Zynga titles Draw Something and Zynga Poker coming soon for the handset.

However Alex Bubb, Nokia’s head of games partnering, said the EA move was mutually beneficial. “This was an opportunity for EA to use Nokia’s mass volume and reach in emerging markets like India and China,” he said

“Working with Nokia, EA was able to legitimise gaming on mobile platforms in these markets and as an organisation bring new customers to their global franchises using innovative business models.”

Nokia has also released a number of gaming statistics: games are the number one download for Asha Touch devices, while a third of all downloads from the Nokia Store are gaming apps. Furthermore, it predicts that the global mobile gaming industry will be worth $11.4bn by 2014.