Mobile casinos are the real burning topic at the time of writing, unsurprisingly perhaps, since the smartphone revolution has been taking up a lot of energy for all of us: even if we have doggedly refused to buy a smartphone or tablet, we’re surrounded by the trappings of our on-the-go lifestyle at all times.
It’s big business too – whereas as recently as 2012 the market value of ALL types of mobile games (ie. not just betting games and apps) was valued at US $7.8bn by some estimates, it has been forecast that the mobile phone casino sector is expected to surpass US $48bn mark by 2015!
That’s some growth, even allowing for the ‘blip’ caused by the US prohibition of internet-based gambling with the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act in the US, though this may be tentatively being rolled back.
Particularly if you’re new to online gambling, the array of mobile casino games and how you go about choosing the best mobile casino can appear bewildering.
First a little bit of history. Cast your mind back to the early-mid ‘00s: back then we didn’t have anything like smartphones; if we had a camera phone with a few built-in games in color we were already at the frontier of what the mainstream mobile market had to offer.
Then along came a little product called the Blackberry. This was the beginning of the casino on mobile, as table games including Blackjack and Poker were available to play - and for money.
After that it was only a matter of time, and with the arrival of the iPhone, the Android platform as used on Samsung’s Galaxy products, as well as other smartphones, that the good quality online casinos all wanted to add a new mobile casino to their existing desktop range.
It’s also important to point out that the tablet boom that more or less coincided with the growth in smartphone use also attracted the major online casino mobile players, and really got underway with the launch of Apple’s iPad around 2010 (tablets were in existence well before that, including products from Apple, but technologies were not up to providing burgeoning casino mobile sector at that time).
Tablet versions of games are classified as ‘mobile’ just as much as those for the smartphone. It’s therefore no surprise that gambling sites now have very impressive mobile repertoires in a lot of cases.
And we’re not just talking about table games; the arrival of slots for mobile around late 2011 meant that the best of desktop slots were now translated to smartphones, and were just as playable.
Indeed, at the time of writing you need only flick on commercial TV in Sweden to see every other advert is for one of the reputable casinos, and nearly always with a tablet or smartphone variant being shown – it’s the future of gaming as much as in any other area!
One of the best sites at the time of writing include Comeon! and developers like NetEnt(with their ‘Touch’ range of mobile games), and new kid on the block Yggdrasil are bringing the best of desktop games to the mobile effectively.
It has to be said that at press time, the range of slots available on smartphones and tablets wasn’t as broad with most casinos as would be the case with the desktop variants. But that will change; in any case all the games of the moment are there, and each newly-launched game will generally be available for the mobile too.
Faith in the significance of this platform for online slots and other betting games is perhaps evidenced best by the rise of the mobile casino bonus.
Just as Welcome Bonuses, Free Spins and other promos are the norm for gaming on the desktop, the same also applies to the mobile sector. Indeed it is as viable to speak about an online mobile casino no deposit bonus as it would be for the parent, desktop part of the market.
Well, the same as you would with a desktop online casino. Good reputation, good games, read the small print about wagering requirements, and above all keep your finger on the pulse with a good intelligencer like Casino Daily News to take the hard work out of the search.
Every time there’s a promotion with a mobile casino free bonus or similar we’ll be the first to announce it!
The mobile gambling market, at the time of writing is in a state of flux. The European Union still does not have a unified legislative framework for this platform in place, there are concerns about protection of minors, the legal status of gaming in a lot of other places as well as the question of raising awareness of both the existence of mobile gaming options and the use of smartphones and tablets per se in a few cases.
But great advances are being made, perhaps in the not too distant future we’ll be able to talk about multiplayer casino games for smartphones, and, just as the ‘freemium’ Android and iPhone games like Flappy Bird and Candy Crush have huge circulation, the words ‘mobile casino no deposit’ look set to be more on more on our lips as well!
