Online casinos are a trend which appeared towards the end of the 20th century. At first they were just a form of internet fun, bearing in mind that the internet use was on the rise at that time. However, very few people could predict that online casinos would become a viable alternative for traditional, brick and mortar casinos. I mean, how could one compare the live thrill of sitting opposite of the dealer or the croupier, the reaction of other players, the sounds and the real feel of money and poker chips to the sensation of clicking buttons on a computer? Not to mention the fact that computers back then and computers nowadays were hardly the same in terms of graphics, user-friendliness and other settings, and, of course, one can’t neglect the fact that the internet speed was pretty mediocre back then.
The Rise of Online Casinos
Some people predicted the success of online casinos and were sure that online gaming would slowly but gradually substitute traditional casino gaming, or at least be on the same level as it. It turned out it was a huge success. The online casino industry employs over 6,000 people in the UK alone. This industry earns over 13,000 £million per year. The market size of online casino gaming was $7.4 billion in 2003, it rose $17.7 in 2006 and up to a staggering $41.4 billion in 2015, or an increase of 559% in 13 years. And with the change of legislation in the UK, now the HMRC levies a 15% tax on the income received from the wagers made by UK players. So it’s good for the economy as well.
The Rise of Mobile Devices
Estimates say that in the recent future the smartphone penetration in the Western world would reach 90% and there are more tablets sold in comparison with computers. Many tech giants make more of their profits from selling phones compared to computers.
A similar thing happened when the first smartphones and tablets appeared. While people were pleased that such things exist, most of them were convinced that these devices can’t be a substitute for the good old desktop machines and that, even though mobile devices are useful, we still won’t be able to use them to do most of the things we’re doing on our computers. The developers thought differently and invested a lot of time, effort and funds to develop better and better mobile devices. And they managed to make them as efficient and as useful as computers in many aspects. In some even more efficient, since mobile devices can be really time-saving. They give you the opportunity of doing things while you’re waiting for a train or queueing for the bank or the checkout at the supermarket.
Online Mobile Casinos
Combine these two trends together and you get the phenomenon to which our website is dedicated- mobile online casinos. You have mobile phones, you have online casinos, why not combine the two?! Of course, people wouldn’t be people if they weren’t sceptical at first. The screen is too small, how can you play on it; and how can the phone that has such a small processor deal with the complex casino games. Turns out, nothing could be further from the truth, as mobile casinos are on a serious rise. Many fans of online gaming now see mobile gaming as a practical substitute in times when they’re not near a computer, and some even have it as their preferred type of gaming.
The advantages of mobile gaming are obvious. People nowadays, especially those of the younger generation are very handy with their smartphones and tablets and many spend more time on their smartphones and tablets than on their computers. Also, with the steady and all-present mobile internet connections nowadays you can practically do it anywhere, even in the most remote places. In addition, smartphones and tablets saw a dramatic rise in qualities and capabilities. No more phones that freeze every other second, or tablets that are slower than your personal computer from the end of the 90s.
Astonishing Development
In 2010 the mobile casino gaming was just 11% of all the online gaming and the annual profits income from it were about £2 billion. Estimates show that by 2018 44% of all online casino gaming will be done from mobile devices and the income will rise up to a staggering amount of £14 billion, or 7 times the amount that was registered in 2010. This is more than a clear indicator of how popular mobile gaming is and how much further it is expected to grow. And with all of the developers that are now convinced that mobile gaming is the future, you shouldn’t be surprised by the fact that they’ll keep investing more and that the gaming experience will keep getting better and better. Research have proven that introduction of mobile gaming attracts more people into playing, but also encourages them to take a more casual and less hazardous approach. So it’s a win-win actually.
Technical Requirements
Bearing in mind all the figures that we stated above and the clear tendency of players towards accepting mobile gaming, all casinos, or at least the ones that can be considered to be of a high or even a medium level of quality and reliability, include an online section nowadays. One of the best things about mobile online casinos is that there aren’t high technical requirements. Any smartphone will do. Well, a reasonably recent one. Most of the tablets will do to. If you own an Android based or an iOS based device of the latest few generations then you’ll be able to play mobile casino games on your devices. Some casinos also support Windows based devices, as well as Blackberry phones, but most stick to iOS and Android, as a very large percentage of the smartphones and tablets in use have either of these two operating systems and some casinos just don’t find it affordable to develop games and apps for other devices.
Challenges and Game Availability
Still, despite all the recent developments and the effort put into developing the best mobile casinos by online casino management teams, there are great adversities. First of all, making the games mobile-friendly is quite a difficult task. These games were originally designed and produced for computers, as well as the websites and it requires a great set of skills and a lot of time to adapt them for mobile devices. There are two ways of doing so, either by developing a downloadable app, or by coding the website and the games on it in a way that would make it mobile-friendly, to put it simply, in laymen’s terms.
One of the most serious problems is to optimise the games. Since, even when all of the work is done, whether it is an app or website optimisation, each game has to be made mobile-friendly. And this can be a challenging task, especially since not all mobile devices are the same. The developers would have to make sure that the game would look the same on any and every device which has an operating system that can support it. Many casinos have been open for quite a while at the time when they introduced their mobile versions. So, it was impossible for them to optimise all of their games. Most casinos are doing this gradually, selecting only their top games at first. But don’t worry, since even an average casino has at least 4-5 dozens of games available, whereas some have a lot more.
Mobile Live Casino
Companies and online casinos are moving things in the direction of introducing as many mobile-friendly games as possible. It is particularly important to have at least few games of every category. Of course, slots are the most common category and a vast majority of all the available games would be slots. If you’re into online gaming you are surely familiar with the phenomenon of live casino. Live online casinos practically took online casinos one step closer to land-based casinos, enabling you to feel an authentic casino environment in your own home.
Live casino is quite demanding and it is fairly expensive for the online casinos since they have to either hire a company that will do everything for them and organising live casino events in an actual casino environment can be quite expensive, not to mention that streaming the videos online and hosting them on the casino website is another expense that should be taken into account. This is the reason why there aren’t many live games available for mobile. However, you will be able to enjoy live roulette and blackjack, and possibly some other games as well, on your mobile device. Bearing in mind the progress in online mobile gaming and how rapid it was these past few years, we can expect a greater offer of live mobile casino games in the near future.
HTML5 vs. Native Apps
As we mentioned before, games can either be played directly in the browser that you use on your mobile device, or on an app that was designed specifically for that purpose. This is a huge dilemma especially amongst IT technology aficionados and it is not solely limited to the mobile casino gaming industry. Which is better for the players and which is more efficient for the companies? Ultimately, of course, all of the companies want to attract as many players as possible so, they too will strife to offer them the very best.
What is HTML5?
The easiest and the simplest way to optimise a website, is by employing HTML5 technology. This technology was developed recently and it was presented to the public towards the end of 2014, when it finally substituted the previous generation, HTML4. In fact, HTML5 combines HTML and XHTML elements, but let’s not get too technical. It is important for online casinos because it allows them to optimise their websites and make them mobile friendly for a relatively short amount of time and at a reasonably low price. On top of that, you don’t need to hire the very best engineers to have the website optimised. In addition, with HTML5 the team that did the optimisation is allowed to change and improve the version on a daily basis as technology and innovation progress and also in accordance with customer feedback.
Native Apps explained
Unlike the HTML5 version, where the engineers can use one standard base of the code and just adapt it for various devices, depending on their type, operating system and screen size, when it comes to developing downloadable apps, also known as native apps, things are a bit different. Firstly, they would need to develop a special app for different operating systems, one for iOS based devices and another for Android. But, also, the phone app isn’t the same as the tablet app, so they would need at least 4 apps if they want to cover both Android and iOS devices. The development of each app would require a lot of work, because developing an app is much more complicated than simply optimising a website and the casino would need to develop at least four apps.
Advantages and Disadvantages
In addition, with HTML5 optimisation, owners of other devices can also access the online mobile casino and play a hand or two. Despite the fact that iOS and Android definitely dominate the market, there are a number of people who have Windows operated phones and tablets or some version of the Blackberry. With the native apps, the engineers would have to develop separate apps for these devices and that can be quite expensive and time-consuming. This is the reason why most casinos don’t have Windows or Blackberry apps.
It is clear that both options have got some advantages and some disadvantages. With the native app, you are obliged to download it and install it on your phone or tablet. This means that if you’re using more than one device, you’d have to have it installed on each of them. That shouldn’t be a problem. In addition, the games and the whole experience may seem a bit different, bearing in mind that the iOS and the Android app won’t be the same. On the other hand, with the native device the quality should be much higher, the games won’t freeze and the whole experience would feel a bit more “natural”. On the other hand, the HTML5 is a lot better than its predecessors and the quality of the games is quite high, so it can match the one of the native apps.
Finally, most of the good online casinos would offer both variants and you’d be able to try out both the native app and the HTML5 version and see which one suits you best. Because, despite all the extra costs that this involves, the online casinos are aware that the mobile gaming is the future and they would do what needs to be done in order to make their clients happy.
Payment Methods and Bonuses
Of course, there are other issues that arise from the use of mobile devices for the purpose of online casino gaming. In order to play online casino games for real money you’d have to be able to deposit and withdraw money in and from your account. If you weren’t able to do that, mobile gaming wouldn’t have made a lot of sense. But it is possible, you can deposit money when you’re logged in from your mobile device and you can also withdraw money the same way. Usually the process is just the same. If you were to deposit money via your credit card you simply do the same steps as you would if you were on your PC and it takes the same amount of time before the amount is available in your account. The only difference is that some casinos have restrictions on some payment methods and they are not available for mobile users.
What about bonuses, you may wonder. There are so many special bonuses that casinos offer, surely there are some that are meant for people who play on their smartphones or tablets. Casinos rarely offer special mobile bonuses, i.e. such that only players who play on their mobile devices are entitled to.
This doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to get bonuses and promotions if you’re playing casino games on your mobile phone. Namely, you are eligible for all the bonuses and promotions that you’d be eligible for otherwise. Let’s take the Welcome Bonus, which is offered at virtually every online casino. Say that it is a 100% match bonus of up to £100. It doesn’t matter if you register and make a deposit from your phone or your computer. If you deposit £100 and you’re a new player, you will get a bonus of £100. It’s really as simple as that.
Conclusion
All in all, online mobile gaming has come a long way, but it still has a lot of room of improvement. Bearing in mind how quickly newer and technologically more advanced versions of mobile phones and devices appear on the market and that online casinos put a lot of focus on mobile gaming, we can surely expect that the mobile casino industry will keep growing. More and more people will be playing online casino games for real money on their mobile devices and the quality of the games will be on a pair with the computer versions of the games.