This is surely the casino industry “news” story that has been breaking for what seems like eons. You know, the one that goes “mobile casinos are about to explode this year”.
There have been so many false dawns on this front, that we have lost count. WAP casinos on your Nokia phone anyone? Playing tennis on an Atari at the end of the 80s with 2 paddles was more exciting.
Well, guess what. The mobile casino market has exploded and 2011 was the year it all happened. Thanks to the huge penetration of smartphones in developed markets such as the UK, along with increased mobile broadband speeds, mobile casinos are officially big news and officially here to stay.
This has become a new trend in spending time and money. It’s history.
So what has created the tipping point- how have we suddenly arrived at this point?
Well, a number of things have contributed to this, including:
- The growth of the tablet market with Android 3 devices (Samsung Galaxy, Acer, LG etc etc) taking on the market leader iPad and iPad2.
- The big growth in smartphone take up, with Android phones including the Google Nexus S, HTC, LG and Motorola phones taking on iPhone 4 and 3 (and with iPhone 5 just around the corner).
- An increase in browsing speeds.
- Competition in the mobile carrier market to offer “all you can eat” data plans.
- The crash landing between gaming and social networks driven by Facebook in particular.
Mobile casinos are now threatening to surpass all other types of casinos. We are not there yet, as the quality of the games isn’t quite there, but at the end of the day, people prefer to play games on the sofa. It’s entertainment after all. And surfing on hte sofa generally means a tablet or phone.
And developers on the new iPad2 and who use HTML5 in particular are going to keep upping the quality ante. The games are going to get more and more appealing to the eye, with realistic graphics and great usability.
Social networking is probably the genie in this whole race. Zynga, the Facebook games developer, has a mission to connect people through games. They have all of the tools now to “switch on” real play casino games if the legal environment permits then.
We are already seeing huge growth in this area. It’s our view that we are at the very beginning of the curve. Expect this market to get bigger. ALOT bigger.
