The Optimal Mobile Platform for Gambling
The world of online gambling has risen significantly in popularity, as has the ownership of mobile phones. But how easy, or hard, is it to use your mobile to gamble online and what is the best OS to do it?
How Common are Mobile Platforms?
With literally hundreds of millions, if not billions, of smartphones in the world today, online casinos have been quick to adopt the technology. By expanding their accessibility and making their casino games compatible with a variety of operating systems and devices, the majority of gambling sites are now easily reached via mobile. Coverage by site and game is not quite 100% but it is very high.
Features of Mobile Gambling
The single biggest and most obvious advantage is that playing this way is far more convenient than any other. Desktops and laptops can't be slid into your jacket pocket. On top of that, people use their smartphones for an increasingly large array of tasks, so using them for betting doesn't require any extra gear.
Casinos offer bonuses to their customers, existing and new, and this is true of their mobile platforms as well. This combination of bonuses and the apps many sites now offer help to foster loyalty from players towards the casino and rewards the player for sticking with a particular brand.
One downside is that the suite of casino games available via apps, although very broad, is not total. This means that there might be some games you can access via laptop/desktop which are not included in the app.
Android and Apple Mobile Platforms
As you probably know already, Android and Apple (utilising iOS) are the two dominant parties in the smartphone industry. Because their market share is the largest by a wide margin, this means there are more potential players using their operating systems. Naturally, software developers tend to focus first on making their sites/products compatible with these two systems. If you're using one of them then you'll find it easier to access the mobile offering of a casino.
Windows and BlackBerry
These two mobile platforms do have a lower market share, but their numbers are still in the millions, and that's not something to be sniffed at. Accordingly, betting sites now often work with the Windows and BlackBerry OS, although coverage might not be quite as broad as for the two systems mentioned above.
There is a special advantage that Windows has over other operating systems, though. Its software is from the same range as that of PCs, so when a mobile using that OS accesses a casino it can do so in just the same way as a PC, with no app required. Even better, because it's not using the 'mobile' platform as such, the full range of games is available.
In terms of coverage, it's clear Android/iOS have an advantage, but the shared PC-style software of Windows is a unique selling point. If you prefer using an app over browser, then Android or an iPhone is the way to go; if it's the other way around, I'd suggest Windows.