Date: 11th December 2013
Written by: Samuel Alonso¸ PKF Malta
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Mobile Gambling is a new variant of gambling currently developed for mobiles or tablets and it is becoming very popular. In fact high growth prospects have been observed and over a dozen mobile casinos have been in operation since March 2011.
According to a new report issued this week through market research by Juniper Research¸ gambling is in the process of becoming the next monster mobile market. To be specific the number of people who use their smartphones and tablets to gamble online will more than double over the next five years as well¸ market analysts have predicted.
Expectations are that by the end of this year 22% of the global population will own a smartphone. It is interesting to note that in 2009 smartphone owner was just 5% of the global population.
Be it sports betting¸ mobile casinos or various lotteries¸ Juniper says that 64 million people will use mobile devices to gamble in 2013 and that figure will increase to 164 million by 2018. It expects annual revenues from mobile entertainment services to hit $75 billion (€54.46 billion) by 2017¸ nearly twice the estimated $39 billion (€28.32 billion) for 2013. This latest report on mobile gambling highlighted that the strongest growth would come from the North American market.
This substantial growth is primarily derived from the emergence of more sophisticated monetization strategies¸ allied to a nascent ecosystem of app-centric mobile devices¸ such as smart watches.
The majority of users would be switching to mobile gambling from desktop services. It is attributed this migration to the fact that many features of gambling work better on a mobile device than a PC. For example¸ smartphone and tablet users can place bets on a sports match without having to turn away from the TV screen they’re watching it on.
In 2010 Gartner Inc. forecasted the 2014 global mobile gambling revenues¸ which amounted to $1.4 billion. In conclusion we can say that there is a lot of potential for this burgeoning business¸ where companies who are focusing on this will see some exciting future benefits.