Tired of playing games on your mobile, all by yourself? Bluetooth games are here to the rescue.

Mauj Telecom, one of the leading providers of wireless mobile content and solutions, is betting big on the Bluetooth boom with the launch of a clutch of games.

?One can play games on a mobile phone against artificial intelligence, over the cellular network, or through Bluetooth,? says Arun Gupta, chief operating officer of Mauj Telecom.

?After a while, it gets boring to play on your own and networks are not yet capable of supporting smooth gaming. Bluetooth solves both problems,? he adds.

Bluetooth is a wireless means of locally connecting devices like PCs, mobile phones and cameras. It is based on the unlicensed and globally available 2.45 GHz Industrial Scientific and Medical frequency band.

The term itself has an interesting genesis. The system is named after Danish king Harald Bl?tand (Harold Bluetooth in English), who was known for his unification of previously warring tribes from Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

Bluetooth, similarly, was intended to unify different technologies like computers and mobile phones. The Bluetooth logo merges the Nordic letters for ?H? and ?B?.

?Over GPRS, you get a speed of 20-30 kbps and over EDGE 30-50 kbps, but Bluetooth allows speeds up to 100 mbps,? claims Gupta.

The players only need to be within 15 m of each other. That means even if your friend is in the next cubicle, it won?t be a problem to race him on the mobile phone.

Mauj has launched eight games that can be downloaded from the portals of service providers and played both on their own and with others through Bluetooth. Each download costs between Rs 100 and Rs 150. It plans to add ?four to five? more in the next two weeks.

Beyond Speed Limits lets competitors race across five circuits, with car washes and rewards in the form of faster cars providing a more realistic touch.

Tennis Smash is a straight-forward tennis match with the option of choosing tennis players and courts. Other titles include Fowl Play, Snakes & Ladders and more.

?The response has been good, with Bluetooth games accounting for 20 per cent of our game downloads,? offers Gupta.

Some other mobile content providers, however, feel that the market for Bluetooth gaming in India is still nascent and hurdles such as handset compatibility ? only around 11 sets from Nokia and Sony Ericsson currently support the feature ? and price, must be overcome.

?It is a niche segment and only few handsets support Bluetooth gaming. We have developed a couple of games for the platform but we?re not very bullish about it,? says Alok Kejriwal of Mobile2win.com.

Next on the cards for Mauj is the 3D Bluetooth game and one based on an upcoming Bollywood movie, where the players have to team up to achieve the target.