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Feb 18, 11:11 AM (ET)

By HILLEL ITALIE

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NEW YORK (AP) - Over the past couple of years, the cell phone has emerged as a sound system, a video game player and a TV screen. Now, it could become the latest outlet for books.

Random House, the country`s leading trade book publisher, announced Thursday that it had purchased a ``significant minority stake`` in VOCEL, a San Diego-based company that describes itself as a provider of ``premium-branded applications for mobile phones.``

Random House also announced that it has reached licensing arrangements with VOCEL to provide cell phone access to the publisher`s Living Language foreign-language study programs and Prima Games video game strategy guides.

``You have a whole generation of consumers, perhaps more than a generation, who are never more than 10 feet from their cell phones, including when they shower,`` said Richard Sarnoff, president of Random House Ventures, an investment subsidiary of Random House, Inc. ``Increasingly, cell phones are becoming an appliance for entertainment and education.``

Cell phone texts have already caught on in Germany, South Korea and Japan, where a cell-novel became so popular that it was turned into a feature film, ``Deep Love.`` But don`t expect the next Tom Clancy thriller to pop up on your phone. In the United States, Sarnoff said that phones, like e-books, are currently better suited for information than for narrative.

``The screens are inappropriate for that kind of sustained reading,`` he said. ``That`s a `maybe, someday` discussion. We`ll keep an eye on that area, and if something happens ... we`ll certainly respond.``

Random House already has dabbled in the phone market. VOCEL is currently issuing a line of SAT study guides from The Princeton Review, an educational services company in which Random House has a minority ownership. Sarnoff spoke of using phones to transmit dictionary definitions or as sources of language training.

``You can have both text and an audio component,`` he said. ``When you learn a language, for instance, you can have the word appear on your screen and also hear how it`s pronounced.``

Other publishers had mixed reactions. Penguin Group USA and St. Martin`s Press said they had no current plans to invest in phone texts. But Oxford University Press said it was interested, and Simon & Schuster ``has been testing the waters,`` according to spokesman Adam Rothberg.

``We`re talking to all kinds of people about it,`` he said. ``It`s obviously one of the next frontiers in the e-book world.``