The views, opinions and positions expressed by the author and those providing comments on this article are theirs alone and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions or positions of GGS Gamer
There is no denying the mobile phone industry has come a long way. From the first commercial device in 1983 to the likes of the iPhone and Android devices today, the differences are truly remarkable.
Present day, as we head into a new, next generation age for mobile, over 6 billion people have access to a mobile phone. That’s more people than have access to a working toilet. It’s an incredible statistic that shows how far the industry has come.
Over the last 20 years, more and more features have been added to our devices, from text-messaging in 1992, to WAP and Wi-Fi, to the hundreds of thousands of games that we now have readily available to us.
And it’s perhaps the mobile gaming industry that technology has had the biggest impact.
It’s a misguided fact that the first game to hit our screens was Nokia’s Snake back in 1997. In fact three years previous, Tetris was introduced to the Hagenuk MT-2000 device. However, it was Snake that arguably changed the way view video gaming. It has since become one of the world’s most renowned games and can be found on over 350 million devices.
Since then the industry has become a $13.2 billion empire, largely thanks to the development of the smartphone, and with games becoming more popular than ever, expect that figure to continue to rise.
From Snake, games have taken the mobile world by storm. With the continuing improvement of technology, WAP allowed us to download in the early 2000’s, whilst 3/4G and the added Wi-Fi to devices now allows us to download instantly, as well as share and post scores to friends.
The likes of Disney, Electronic Arts and Konami have all taken the plunge into the mobile market, whilst the online gambling industry is going from strength to strength.
The mobile gambling industry is set to be worth well over $100 billion by 2017, and poker card games are becoming increasingly popular with 5 card stud, Omaha and why not bingo sites all making the crossover from desktop to mobile comfortably.
Whilst all this has happened in just 20 years, it’s likely that in a much shorter time even more revolutionary developments will continue to hit the screens that are now slim-line, full colour, and full HD. Poptopia recently released the world’s first scented app, whilst it’s only a matter of time when our high definition games turn into three-dimensional. Surely?
