The 20-year-old mobile phone industry, according to Informa Telecoms Group analyst Rufus Jay, this month reached the 2 billion subscriber milestone, and with markets such as China, India, Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe coming of age, the number will grow to 3 billion by 2010.
The exponential growth is mainly driven by SMS, browsing and valued-added services like billing, business and, of course, mobile gambling. The prime example of mobile's potential in the gambling space is the United Kingdom, where all the big gambling operators have utilized mobile technology to create new distribution channels with "more of the same" products.
Perhaps a prelude to the new m-gambling possibilities, Ladbrokes and Paddy Power this week launched applications for network operator O2's I-mode platform, a closed network enabling mobile phone users to access Web pages written in CHTML (a compact version of HTML). O2 bought the platform from NTT Docomo (one of Japan's big three mobile phone networks). In the context of gambling, customers of the two bookmakers can check account balances and make simple transactions using the technology.
IGamingNews.com contacted the 10 biggest m-gambling operators in an effort to ascertain just how much business they're doing in this growing space, but none were willing to share this information. Nevertheless, all of them have acknowledged that m-gambling is a major component of their growth strategies.