A new report from Juniper Research has concluded that the annual revenue raised from gambling on mobile devices will exceed $27.5 billion in 2013, despite the global recession.  Their prediction is attributed to the fact that more and more gambling operators are offering mobile gambling services, there are new markets opening up whereby mobile gambling was previously restricted and there have been and will be improvements as well as wider availability of handset user interfaces.

This Juniper Research prediction follows previous predictions that punters would wager $12 billion in 2010 and an even earlier prediction that $23 billion would be wagered in 2011.

$27.5 billion is a massive leap from the figure of $2 billion which was gambled around the world on mobile devices in 2005.

Furthermore, Juniper Research predict that global gross win from mobile gambling devices will grow from around $192 billion in 2008 to $3.4 billion in five years time.

The majority of bets placed on mobile devices are likely to come from sports betting but mobile lottery services will be a key growth area and will get the highest adoption level.  Mobile lotteries are currently being introduced to Asian and Latin American countries and the report also predicts that they will be 400 million users by 2013.

Despite the new US administration likely to have a more positive approach to online and mobile gambling, which is still restricted in the United States, Dr Windsor Holden who wrote the report believes it will take some time for the law to be changed and so mobile gambling will not be introduced into the USA until 2010 at the very earliest, he predicts.

He does though praise the European Union for its free-market intervention which is liberalising certain European gaming markets which has accounted for increased availability of mobile gambling services across the continent.

Throughout the next five years, Dr Holden believes that Western Europe will continue to be the largest regional mobile gambling market but the UK’s relative contribution will fall slightly because more mobile services will be deployed on the continent.

The Juniper Research report also advises gambling operators to supply text based gambling services in the developing world to reach more customers.

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