OREANDA-NEWS. March 19, 2015. Nintendo shares zoomed more than 21 percent on Wednesday after the videogame giant said it will enter the booming market for games on smartphones, in a U-turn long sought by investors.

Traders pounced with buy offers overwhelming sell offers, sending the putative asking price up 21.3 percent on Tuesday's close to 17,080.0 yen -- hitting the daily stop limit of 3,000 yen.

The broader market was flat.

Nintendo, based in the ancient city of Kyoto, announced Tuesday it was teaming up with Tokyo-based mobile gaming company DeNA to develop games for smartphones.

The maker of the Super Mario and Pokemon franchises plans to buy 10 percent of DeNA for 22 billion yen (\\$181 million) with the pair set to create games based on Nintendo's host of popular characters.

Investors had been hoping Nintendo would venture into the expanding market but the company has -- until now -- stuck with a "consoles-only" policy, noted Kenji Shiomura, senior strategist at Daiwa Securities.

"Now they are finally stirring and... the market likes it," he said.

Even with Wednesday's stellar gains, Nintendo's stock is still a long way off where it once was. The issue had lost around 70 percent since June 2007 when Apple's iPhone made its debut.

"Finally Nintendo has turned a corner and embraced a huge strategic shift," Atul Goyal, an analyst at Jefferies Group LLC in Singapore, said in a report, as he raised his recommendation on the stock to "buy".

"We have been waiting for Nintendo to make this move and this will offer large upside."

DeNA was also poised to rise by the daily limit in Tokyo.