Bullet Business

Total annual wagers via mobile phones are being projected to cross $27.5 billion-mark by 2013, according to a new report from Juniper Research.

The key factors which would drive this figure are going to be a sea-change in operator attitudes towards mobile gambling services, improvements to handset user interfaces and the gradual introduction of legislation permitting remote gambling in selected markets.

"Operators are demonstrably much more open to the idea of mobile gambling than they were even 12-18 months ago, both in terms of offering gambling services on-portal and accepting advertising from gambling companies," said report author Dr. Windsor Holden.

The report mentioned that the EU intervention was having some impact on the liberalisation of Europe's gambling markets. Also, it argued that commercial deployments in the US were now unlikely until 2010 at the earliest.

Juniper Research also found that mobile sports betting will comprise the majority of annual wagers over the next five years, although mobile lottery services -- which are being increasingly deployed in key Latin American and Asian markets -- will attain the highest adoption level, with nearly 400m users worldwide by the end of the forecast period.

Other findings from the report include: Global gross win from mobile gambling services will rise from just under $192m in 2008 to $3.4bn by 2013; In terms of total wager, Western Europe will remain the largest regional mobile gambling market throughout the forecast period, although the relative contribution of the UK will decline significantly with the deployment of more services in continental Europe; Gambling service providers should deploy text-based gambling services in developing markets to encourage mass adoption.