Over the next five years, the number of mobile and/or tablet owners using their devices to gamble will increase by 100 million, meaning that 164 million people will either place a bet, visit a mobile casino or buy a lottery ticket on their device in 2018. These findings come from Juniper Research’s latest report on mobile gambling, which highlighted that the strongest growth would come from the North American market.

According to the report although growth has been slow in the US since the DoJ (Department of Justice) ruling in 2011, the number of users in the region is expected to pick up sharply from 2014 onwards. This will occur as states which have not yet fully legislated on remote gambling make progress following successful services launching in Nevada and New Jersey. In addition, inter-state poker, where two players in separate, regulated markets play against each other, is likely to become a reality in the medium term, further driving mobile/tablet gambling usage, according to Juniper Research (http://www.juniperresearch.com).

The report highlighted that the majority of these users would be switching to mobile gambling from desktop services. It attributed this migration to the fact that many features of gambling work better on a mobile device than a PC. For example, in-play betting on a mobile device does not disrupt a user’s experience when watching a live sports match, and dual-screen options on tablet casino games can enhance gameplay.

Report author, Siân Rowlands, observed that ‘mobile can frequently provide a more immersive and convenient gambling experience than a desktop PC or laptop. As a result of this, gambling operators have been required to shift the nature of their organization away from “legacy” services such as telephone betting towards becoming a more mobile-oriented company, with the ai