Many online gaming operators have invested heavily in recent years in their mobile product. Mobile casinos and sportsbooks are touted as the future and in many cases a poor mobile offering is being blamed for decreases in revenue. Almost all European operators will now offer a mobile casino and sports betting platform and although it’s taking a while longer to get up to speed in the US, they are fast catching up. The question is whether or not users of online casinos and sports betting sites will truly switch to mobile, and while of course desktop gaming will never fade away, will more customers be using their handheld devices than their laptops?
Handheld media devices such as smartphones and tablets are becoming more and more popular and as the price seems to keep coming down they are opening a new market up for online casinos. No longer is it the case that an Android tablet will set you back a small fortune as they are now available for well under $200, closer to the $100 mark in some cases and the plain fact that many people are using them at home now for everyday online tasks such as email, banking and shopping means that casino play is most definitely on the up as far as mobile is concerned.
The amount of Android tablets sold in the US has increased year on year since they became widely available and the recent entrance to the market of stores own branded tablets at fire sale prices has meant those numbers are doing nothing but rising. Online casinos are doing their very best to keep up with demand in the form of optimizing slots for mobile use, but this does take plenty of work and time and at present, especially in the US, there’s much work to be done to keep a slot player happy...at present they simply have so many more options in a full download casino on their desktop.
This appears to be a key point in the future of mobile casinos in the US and it’s the optimization of games that is key. Mobile payment methods and solutions are just fine, they are much the same in any industry that uses mobile applications, it’s the games that are key. A number of online gaming development companies, most notably RTG have started to roll out the mobile slots and they are coming, with more on the way, however until they get to the stage where they can at least compete with regular online casinos, then they will not take the lead as far as player numbers are concerned.
