Mobile gambling growth continues
Mobile growth

The desire for gaming and gambling drives smartphone and tablet sales, and vice versa.

According to a recent study by wireless analysts Juniper Research suggests that within just four years the global mobile gambling market will begin generating a hundred billion dollars in annual revenues.

Driven to a large extent by the quick growth in smartphone and tablet penetration rates across the world, as well as the increasing popularity of online gambling, this projected growth will also affect those markets, which currently have only a small number of players.

The convergence of social gaming and online gambling is also expected to reinforce these trends.

While mobile device penetration rate is highest in some small Asian countries (most notably Singapore), other large, but technologically less penetrated countries of the region have also been contributing to online gambling revenues due to the sheer size of their populations.

Considering that many of these countries prohibit or restrict both offline gambling and domestic online or mobile gambling, aspiring players are already driving revenues up for foreign mobile casinos in ever increasing numbers and this trend is expected to continue.

Even though the share of smartphones may be relatively low in India or China, even such low percentages mean hundreds of millions of potential players. Consequently, as mobile blackjack, poker, bingo and other “novel” games penetrate these markets they are likely to gain a devoted following there.

This does not, however, mean that customers from the technologically better equipped populations (i.e. Europe, US, and other western markets) should be discounted. In fact, they are expected to keep contributing significantly to those revenues, since their per capita spending potential is generally greater than the global average. They also tend to have more time available for leisure activities as well as spending more time traveling – both of which provide ample opportunity for mobile casino gambling.

Finally, betting through mobile sportsbooks, although a practice less widespread than playing casino games on portable devices, it is nevertheless a significant contributor to those overall revenues.