The Revolution will be Small

[Income Access Blog]

In the last couple of years, more and more people have begun accessing the World Wide Web using a hand-held device, such as a smartphone or iPod Touch. Even though, at one point it was just a dream, it’s now a reality that we’re all faced with. With the ever-increasing availability of wireless and 3G [...]Related posts:

1. Bet Trackers IPhone© App now available
2. Top 10 Mobile Searches for 2009
3. Capitalizing On Mobile Markets

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[TheGooner]

NO - It won't be.

[MarkJohn]

So, what do you think, then? Are people going to migrate away from desktops/laptops and play on mobile phones, and smaller tablet computers, once available? Or will people not go to gaming sites on those devices? And, if not, why wouldn't they?

[Adamvv]

Gooner, I would love to hear what you have to say about this. With your experience as an affiliate, I'm sure many merchants have recently developed a mobile version of their software and approached you about promoting it.

With this in mind, is this not a first step towards a mobile interface? Couldn't this eventually become the norm?

Look at the way people are beginning to "work". Flex-time and telecommuting are becoming apparent in innovative companies who stress the importance of comfortable, productive environments (see Google), so this in turn leads to a more mobile lifestyle for these employees.

If management is changing, technology is changing, and peoples lives are changing, why wouldn't our access to the web change?

[TheGooner]

The future will continue to be large - and will get larger - as it matches the screens available in peoples homes.

While there are some applications that DO transfer easily into a mobile phone, such as email, a GPS style restaurant finder and some sort of chat/text application that's about it for current must have apps.

The achillies heel of mobile phones is the pathetically small screen that does not really allow for any sort of detailed information or web content.

The consumer demand from web offerings is for more detail, more information, more personalisation ... and it's growing at such a rate that the previous web 'standard' of an 800px wide website has been slowly morphing into websites that are 1000px or even 1200px wide - to take advantage of the dominance of widescreen setups.

If you could get the same web experience through mobile then of course it would be popular, but you cannot, it's not close, it's not desirable.

Perhaps in time, if some sort of wearable glasses hardware is developed and the small screen can effectively become a large screen due to close proximity to the eyes, then you might have a media experience that cn revolutionise web access.

But currently, anyone using a mobile / blackberry to access web content is definately having a second class web experience, and it is not the primary access choice to the internet for anyone.

[JuliaS]

I think the iphone has sort of started to address this issue, with their screens being much more adaptable than standard mobile devices.

[MarkJohn]

Perhaps it's wishful thinking on my part that mobile will start to take more of a share of the market, because the more choices I have when looking to play on the train on the way home, the better the products will have to be in order to compete.

What I'm really curious to see unfold is
a) Will tablet PCs with small screen sizes become as popular as they are expected to be, given their low prices?
b) Will people using tablets use them to access online gaming sites?
c) and, if so, how will smaller screen sizes affect design principles?

[Louis - Income Access]

I think where people get confused is that proponents of mobile gaming and the mobile web aren't saying that it is going to REPLACE browsing from home, but rather, that more and more browsing, chatting, gaming, and every other form of web interaction will be done while outside of the home (on smaller, portable devices), in addition to the connectivity that already happens at home.

Gooner, you are absolutely right in that people will demand more from their home browsing, and that the PC and traditional web is not going to go away, but rather, continue to grow in usage.

However, it is ABSOLUTELY INDISPUTABLE that mobile web use will grow rapidly, and people who love poker, bingo, casino or sports betting will want to do it on their mobile. It's already happening, and there is nothing that will stop it from growing. Operators, affiliates and anyone else who ignores this market will simply miss out, just like those who ignored the potential of the internet in the early days.

[TheGooner]

I expect a lot of disappointed sponsor affiliate programs in 2010 then .. my advise would be don't tie your salary bonus to this market - it's still a "future" thing IMO.


I just don't see mobile gaming as something that people want to do yet - when the "at home" experience is so much better the the "mobile phone" experience - the only market segment I can imagine using mobile gaming are the real addicts ?!

But - who knows - perhaps you are right in the markets that you are targetting ?
Which countries are doing best for you?

Lets do a quick survey - to get feel the market.
Surely a basic statistic like mobile gamings % of overall take cannot be commerically sensitive?

Operators.
- Share your mobile take as a percentage of overall take now. (is it 1% or 2%?)
- And what you expect it to be in 6 months / 12 months time .
- And which country leads with mobile gaming penetration?

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We can come back and revisit the thread in 6/12 months and see how it went.