Is Mobile Gambling The Future?

There has been a lot of speculation over the last few years that mobile gambling is the future and if it is then our friends at MobileGamblingOffers.com will be the best place to go to check out – and the name is a big giveaway here – the latest mobile-related gambling offers. But will mobile really catch on and will it ever replace desktop gambling?

It’s impossible to know for sure, of course, and it seems likely that there will always be technological limits to what can be achieved on a mobile. Those limitations are sure to be slowly eroded though, and with the advent of 4G and devices that bridge the gap between a mobile and a tablet, perhaps the future really is mobile gambling.

It is certainly an area of huge growth with regards mobile gaming in general and sports betting specifically, with many online bookmakers reporting that mobile betting will soon overtake bets placed by other means. Betfred announced they expected this shift to take place in 2013 and with smartphone penetration in the UK market at over 60% people increasingly access the internet on their mobile. Gambling has long been at the forefront of technological advancements and it would certainly seem strange if the industry was to allow this particular boat to sail.

Almost all the big bookmakers and online casinos have invested heavily in mobile technology and with many offering apps and / or mobile optimized versions of their site it certainly does seem likely that more and more people will play poker, bingo, casino games and place sports bets via their handheld devices. Many bookmakers have mobile-specific offers and free bets as they seek to gain a footing in the growing market and increasingly these are offered exclusively to mobile customers (usually including tablets).

We now live in an age of zero tolerance to boredom, where attention spans are so short that for many, almost any moment alone – be it on a bus, in a commercial break or whilst a friend is at the bar or toilet – becomes a mobile moment. It is these moments that are so well suited to mobile gaming, in mobile-optimized mobile casinos. For better or worse gambling offers a quick, simple and highly enjoyable way to pass a few moments, and improved mobile technology is set to make that quicker and easier than ever.

The size of screen offers some challenges for certain games, whilst the quality of the internet/3G/4G connections can also be an issue. For this reason poker and bingo are currently lagging behind somewhat, whilst as said, mobile sports betting leads the way and mobile casino is somewhere in the middle. Of course, there will always be a place for desktop gaming, certainly in the immediate future, with the greater power of the hardware offering a graphically, sonically and ergonomically richer experience.

However, in an age where speed, immediacy and convenience are everything there is certainly a strong case for viewing the future of gambling, whether on sports, casino games or anything else, as being in the mobile world. As the technology improves, and the pace of advancement looks set to grow exponentially for some time yet, the limitations of mobile gambling will decrease, whilst the positives it offers will increase. Mobile gambling isn’t quite a brave new world as yet but it is certainly a different-shaped future to the one that may have seemed likely just 10 years ago.