Mobile is still forging ahead as far as the gambling industry is concerned and doesn’t look like being slowed. Well…that’s until excessive amounts of people buy a smart phone and the capacity just can’t take it anymore, which is what seems to be going on at the moment.
A story in the Guardian suggests that after a splurge in people deciding to invest in a new smart phone, and the ease of access to cheaper Android devices, the networks are starting to bow under the pressure.
The first day of the Mobile World Congress expo in Barcelona heard from Hamadoun Toure, secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union, that governments need to hasten the uptake of high-speed fibre optic cables.
Figures for the uptake of smart phones speak for themselves; with the market, growing 74% in 2010 after 300m were sent to retailers to sell to the masses that are seeking the best new technology. We’ve already seen them outsell PCs around the world and it’s thought they will outsell normal “feature phones” within a matter of years.
The ITU forecast, which predicted that smart phone ownership would reach two billion by 2015, said, “in some high usage cities, such as San Francisco, New York, and London, we are still seeing users frustrated by chronic problems of network unavailability.”
As far as the gambling industry goes, the uptake in handsets to two billion is only good news for an industry that is becoming increasingly grateful for the advances being made. The current level of capacity is obviously a problem but with the widespread uptake of fibre optic cables and the increasing availability of wifi hotspots it’s not likely to affect the gambling industry for a long period of time.
