Quoting numbers from the latest report by industry tracker App Annie, VentureBeat reports that spending on mobile casino games on the iOS platform was up 55 percent from November 2013 to November 2014.
The casino app market is currently assessed at $2.7 billion, and is dominated by social casino action in which real money does not directly change hands.
However that situation is gradually evolving into more real-money activity as nations like the UK and Australia develop the business, with the digital gambling industry on pace to reach $100 billion in revenue by 2017.
It’s a startling transformation, bearing in mind that mobile gaming was only worth about $21 billion in 2014, and console gaming generates around $55 billion in spending.
App Annie reveals that download rates for card, casino, and dice games on mobile were up slightly, but that each category saw very significant increases in revenue.
Card-game revenue was up 50 percent year-over-year to a total of approximately $150 million, and casino games saw a 55 percent increase to around $100 million.
The story is repeated Google Play, where the combined revenue for casino and card games was up 105 percent year-over-year.
App Annie notes that the changes represent a shift in spending for the industry from web-based social networks like Facebook to mobile, with the latter attracting more people to this sort of gaming.
“In Q3 2014, online gambling industry heavyweight PokerStars saw over 50 percent of new registrations come through mobile channels,” reads the App Annie report. “Mobile is now a key channel for expansion to new users, driving considerable growth of the online gambling industry as a whole. A prominent position in the mobile market is, therefore, likely to translate to growth in other sectors for gambling and social casino companies.”
VentureBeat points out that mobile growth is largely due to the popularity of smartphone apps.
The publication notes that downloads for the iOS casino category were up 10 percent compared to flat growth everywhere else. For revenue, casino games saw 60 percent growth, which again outpaced the rest of the world.
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