Two thousand and fourteen was a great year for mobile gambling. According to supply and demand, many players have voted with their fingers when they decided to gamble in online casinos using their mobile devices. It has become normal for online casinos to offer gamblers more and more advanced mobile games that are available for them all the time. We have been reading about the development of online casinos that offer players hundreds of exclusive mobile games since 2014.
The rapid growth of the mobile communications market in recent years has been astounding, and its influence on the gambling market is also stunning. Developers and companies, which are actively looking for new ways to generate income, have received the perfect opportunity to develop and expand their business models and a great chance to enter the gambling market. But, apparently, it's just the beginning of the trend growth of mobile gambling.
Let's face the truth, technological changes are taking place very quickly and gambling companies can not afford to ignore them. The appearance of super-fast speeds on the Internet and the development of constantly changing mobile devices and tablets for online gambling make it vital to operators to keep in touch with these new technological advances. And they are doing their best to offer customers and gamblers even a wider range of opportunities to bet quickly and easily.
The fact is that mobile users of the Western civilization have become the major source of online traffic on the Internet. Just to illustrate that point, nowadays 7 of 10 British consumers have smartphones, and in March 2014 it was reported that 32 percent of owners of mobile devices made at least one purchase on their devices per month.
Initially, online casinos provided millions of gamblers around the world with the opportunity to gamble in casinos at home or in the workplace with all conveniences. This was particularly lucrative source of income for gambling establishments when it was wired Internet. The growth of the market of mobile communications has obliged gambling institutions to develop and offer customers new features.
So, online casino operators, which first published the new applications for online gambling in stores IOS and Android, were very well accepted. They provided their customers with instant access to mobile versions of their most popular online games and had millions of downloads! So, now more and more casinos are creating mobile-compatible versions of their popular online games, providing mobile users with the ability to get access to roulette, poker and slot machines by one click.
When you are playing mobile version of the casino, you actually use your fingers. You pass them to spin roulette or pull the lever of the slot machine. This forms a part of the mobile revolution, i.e. access to realistic casino experience anywhere.
Full use of technological advances
Modern smartphones and tablets with their high-tech features can easily be combined with mobile gambling achievements, including HTML5 and other similar technologies, which allow using all opportunities of mobile devices. This means that the experience you get from gambling on your mobile phone is virtually the same as in the typical online casino, in which you are gambling on PC or laptop.
In most countries, the best selling phones nowadays include smartphones with large screens and precise graphics. Due to this fact, games on the mobile phone have become easier and the feeling of gambling has resembled playing on your computer or laptop. Therefore it has been assumed that users will increasingly make bets on sports and gamble in casino or poker rooms via mobile devices. Nowadays more and more sites are developing special mobile programs for such entertainment, accelerating this growth. And such mobile casinos as William Hill Casino mobile or bet365 Casino mobile offer players mobile games and services of the highest quality.
Many analysts predict a boom in mobile gambling in the nearest future.
Monitoring of researches about the future of mobile Internet and gambling business showed a bright future for this new and dynamic industry. All analysts without exceptions confidently predict that mobile gambling will grow significantly over the next few years.
However a quick look at the world around us shows that this is contrary to common sense. It's hard to say that our live is progressing at the moment. Most people may state that they have a lower income, even in comparison with the previous year, not to mention how it was four or five years ago. This is clearly evident even in wealthy countries despite the fact that salary is growing. The basic expenses such as the cost of food, gasoline, gas and electricity are also steadily growing.
So how the gambling business, which seems to become flourishing with the help of people who have excess income, will grow exponentially as it is promised, if the vast majority of its possible customers actually spend less and less each month? This is an interesting dichotomy, whose investigation results in quite surprising conclusions about the way of changing of gambling and social habits of people. It is necessary to take a broad view of things and analyze the development of mobile gambling all over the world, and only after that it is possible to understand why forecasts for gambling are so positive.
Individual mobile gambler
The first thing to note is that the common habits, as well as gambling habits of people are changing. This occurs due to the development of mobile technology. When smartphones appeared, the first thing they usurped was the functions of traditional mobile phones, but they did not rest on their laurels. The quality of these devices, in particular, the speed of their connection and the ability to stay connected to the Internet anytime and anywhere has changed the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Mobile devices have penetrated into all areas of our lives: you can make video wherever you are and share it with friends via social networks. In any event, you can see people who are making video of this event. A good example of this is the election of the Pope:
People have also started making photos of everything, absolutely everything, for example, a puddle on the pavement, interesting shape or the cloud in the sky, even their own food (!), whose photos are abundant in Instagram. Thanks to smartphones, you always have GPS and can use the navigation of any city. It has become easier to use banking services. You always have access to any information, if you have your smartphone with you. So, you can instantly get answer almost to any question.
Thus, due to the spread of mobile devices common habits of people have changed noticeably, and these technologies can't help affecting changes in gambling habits. This new method of digital communication means for gamblers that they are no longer attached to their computers or laptops. Now they can gamble or bet anywhere with their smartphones or tablets.
A few things have influenced the massive rise of mobile gambling. The first one is changing of the attitude to mobile devices. Previously, they were considered as some kind of unnecessary luxury. Now smartphone is a necessary thing for many people, which is used to organize and simplify many aspects of their domestic life, work and social life. The second factor is the quantity of people who have changed their old mobile phones to high-tech smartphones. This means that the number of potential users of smartphones continues to grow, which in turn, will only increase the number of potential mobile gamblers.
We have already begun to understand why the market of mobile gambling will continue to grow for a considerable period of time, but another key factor that influences the growth is just human laziness. So, earlier people had to get off their backsides from sofas and go to the bookmaker if they suddenly wanted to make bets. Then it became possible to do this on the Internet, using PC or laptop. New mobile technologies also have allowed us not only to bet anywhere, but also to play a lot of games (such as casino games, bingo, slots or poker), in any place where you are.
Nowadays mobile technologies have become more affordable. Therefore, there is no need to visit real casinos. If you want to play here and now, you can get access to any casino directly from your mobile phone and, by the way, mobile gambling is often encouraged by bonuses for the participation. It is not only easier to play, but more incentives to gamble have appeared. Therefore, it is not surprising that, for example, the bookmaker Ladbrokes has reported an 1100% increase in the number of mobile bets compared to the last year. In fact, betting has become a quick, convenient and affordable for more people than ever before.
One important thing should be noted: the development of mobile gambling does not mean that people will spend more money on gambling. Of course not, because their habits are changing. Instead of spending money on betting or gambling in brick and mortar casinos, players save money that is usually spent on a trip to offline gambling establishments, accommodation in hotels, and can use saved money directly for gambling with the help of their mobile devices.
Thus, we have identified factors that lead to an exponential growth of the mobile gambling market, and this growth will continue for many years.
Mobile gambling world
Nevertheless, although individual access to high-tech mobile devices can play a significant role in explaining why the mobile gambling is growing, it does not disclose why many experts are predicting such a huge increase. To understand this, we should have a broader view of the entire mobile gambling world.
At the moment there are 64 million online gamblers, who are playing on their mobile phones or tablets in most cases. The recent researches have demonstrated that this number will have been increasing at another 100,000,000 by 2018. However nowadays there is a large and significant part of the population that does not have access to mobile gambling or even to mobile technologies in general.
This may be due to the legislation (as in the case of the US) or financial reasons (e.g., in the case of the poorest and most densely populated areas of East Asia).
However this situation is changing rapidly. The positive signs that the United States may abolish the ban on online gambling are already noticeable. And therefore, millions of new gamblers will appear on the market (and not very poor gamblers!). It is expected that the rules regarding online gambling for money in the United States will be simplified to enable citizens to play in various online casinos legally for the first time since 2006, when these rules were tightened.
It is emphasized in the report created only based on data from the US that the turnover of the mobile gambling market will be able to reach $100 billion by 2017, making this part of the gambling market one of the most important. And authorities are promising to start soon selling gambling licenses to operators in some European countries, where online gambling is also used to be prohibited, such as Spain and Bulgaria. The end result of all these processes will be millions of new professional gamblers, looking forward to trying mobile gambling. Owners of online bookmakers, casinos and poker rooms are now working hard to meet such demands, and many of them are expecting to receive more than 50% of revenue from mobile users for the next year.
Now the question may arise about the cost of the technology. Since the time when computer and mobile technologies appeared, the golden rule of the development has been saying that everything becomes out-of-date and with the appearance of technological advances, the old technology becomes cheaper and more affordable. This is particularly important on the major markets such as China and India, where billions of people will soon be able to afford cheap smartphones, though a little outdated, but these phones will allow them to join the digital world. Even if only a small number of these new users discover the mobile gambling sites, this will attract millions of new gamblers to the market.
Frankly speaking, we, human beings, serve as the cause of these changes.
Probably, we can not spend more money on gambling, but we are spending an increasing sum of what we spend on entertainment, on online gambling. This is the stimulus that will maintain strong growth in the mobile gambling industry for many years in the future along with a rapidly growing number of online gambling.
