Marcel Puyk, CEO of Cellectivity discusses...
As with everything Mobile gaming's future successes remain attached to a variety of external forces, yet despite this, the New Year represents an exciting time for the market place. The last 12 months have seen a number of key changes that will hopefully combine to create a favourable environment.
Chief amongst them, the decision by a number of mobile operators to provide gaming services on portal. This will provide a huge boost for the industry by both driving traffic to gaming sites and increasing overall recognition. This will be further aided by a notable rise in affiliate networks providing mobile gaming, helping to increase potential profitability and thus helping to establish brand identity.
The combination of mobile operators and affiliate networks offering gaming services both on and off portal should finally begin to provide a major contribution to mobile gaming's growth.
Mobile operators are starting to assist mobile gaming in a variety of other ways too, flat rate data billing is sure to be of massive importance. Orange, Vodafone, T-mobile and now Virgin for example have all implemented some form of flat rate data billing, which means that customers won't have to pay for data, and even when they do they'll know what it is they're paying for and how much. We have long argued the cause for more freely available information, moves such as support our view and suggest networks are finally beginning to see the value in free information.
Of course technological issues have always and will no doubt continue to prove a barrier, so the continued widespread proliferation of internet ready handsets is a huge positive, simply put should mobile gaming continue to grow, the industry has to ensure users have up to date access to the latest gaming sites.
But perhaps most importantly changes in the current UK advertising laws will no doubt have a tremendous effect. The changes could potentially rejuvenate gaming's standing amongst existing users and of course will propel gaming to an all together new user base. These changes present Gaming, sports betting and casino brands with a unique opportunity to capitalise on a growing market. Of course in time advertising will become more pervasive, yet from a mobile gaming perspective this can only be a good thing: an increase in advertising means more publicity for mobile gaming to capitalise on.
That said the challenge for the industry remains a relatively simple one, build momentum. Should mobile gaming wish to benefit from recent changes then it must make sure the products available represent the very best in mobile gaming.
