by Mario Alfonsi | Published on Feb 15, 2012 | Updated on Feb 15, 2012One of the largest growth areas for online gambling in the last year has been mobile gaming. And while online casinos have been ahead of the curve in providing gaming options for mobile phones and tablet devices, online poker rooms aren’t far behind.Yesterday, two major providers of mobile real money poker expanded their operations in Europe, perhaps signaling that many more groups will do the same in the months to come.First, PokerStars announced that they would be expanding their mobile services to Great Britain, allowing players in England, Scotland and Wales to play on PokerStars from mobile devices. This was a major expansion for PokerStars, which had previously only offered mobile poker in Italy.“The UK launch of PokerStars Mobile follows a highly successful debut in Italy last month,” PokerStars said. “10% of all PokerStars players in Italy each day now play on mobile, with 7% playing exclusively on mobile devices.”Meanwhile, a smaller player in the poker industry made a much larger play for the mobile market.Bet24 had already offered mobile poker in the UK, France and Austria. Yesterday, Bet24 added another 14 countries to the mobile service, including Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and Switzerland. This means that approximately 55% of the total EU population now has access to the Bet24 mobile app.“Mobile has been a true success story for us, with thousands of downloads since launch,” said Bet24 Poker Manager Lars Kollind. “I have studied the development carefully and am proud to say that mobile poker generates growth without cannibalizing current poker revenues from PC and Mac.”The Bet24 mobile program, which is based on Ongame poker network software, is available for iPhones and other Apple tablets. Conversely, the PokerStars mobile app can be used by both iPhone and Android users.
