The Growth of Smartphone Entertainment

Let’s face it, everywhere you look, you’ll usually be able to see that somebody is on their smartphone. Playing games, consuming video content, listening to music, or even just endlessly scrolling the void that is social media… In fact, I’d be willing to bet that you’re reading this on your smartphone right now and I dare say the odds would be in my favor too! But why is that? Why are people pretty much constantly on their phones? It’s probably an even bigger number of people using their phones now versus the start of the pandemic too, isn’t it?

Well, that’s what we’re here to take a look at today, we’ll be talking about a few things, like the types of content and things you can get done on your phone, also, the availability of mobile phones in general and last but certainly not least, the fact that mobile gaming is a MASSIVELY growing industry that makes up a gigantic portion of the entire gaming market in general in places like China. It may shock you to know how much the mobile gaming market is worth, stick around to find out!

First up, what kind of content can you consume on your phone? Well, when I say this I don’t mean it as an over-exaggeration, you can literally consume any type of content on your phone. Are you into watching documentaries on YouTube? Yeah absolutely, there are thousands of hours of them, not to mention everything available on your standard streaming services. Talking about streaming, are you into watching entertaining people playing video games? Twitch and YouTube as well as some others have you covered for that too!

Okay, but what about if you want to be doing something instead of just consuming media? Well, these days, there are plenty of options for you. You can play conventional video games on mobile, which we’ll get into a lot more detail on this, a little bit later. But what if you’re into more adult games, no not those adult games there’s always the potential of having a dabble on some horse racing or jumping into an online casino, of which there are boatloads to choose from now. 

For those of you who enjoy classic card games like blackjack or sitting down and playing craps or roulette, well now you can enter new online casinos with your smartphone too and enjoy those same games, plenty of brick and mortar bookmakers and brick and mortar casinos have online services these days so it’s worth doing some digging. As there are plenty of opportunities to take advantage of as a new customer, however, it’s worth remembering your capital is at risk when gambling, even if playing in a casino, in person or online is fun.

But, I hear you ask, haven’t online casinos and sportsbooks always been a thing? Well, yeah they have, you’re absolutely right. However, after the start of the pandemic, a lot of the brick and mortar shops that remained looked to angle themselves into the online market, knowing that people physically couldn’t visit them at some points and at other times, even when they were open, some people felt uneasy going out and visiting these places still through fear of catching Covid.

Before I get more into mobile gaming, you’ll understand why I’ve done it this way in just a moment. I want to talk a little bit about how accessible mobile phones have become over the last 10-15 years? I remember when I was a kid in the 90s, mobile phones were very rarely seen in the wild, at least not where I lived in the North East of England. I imagine if you grew up spending a lot of time in central London however you’d have seen a fair amount more than I did. 

So you’d better believe when my dad got a Nokia 3210 as a “work phone” I was blown away by Snake. I spent hours messing around creating custom ringtones for a phone that wasn’t even mine. Back in the day there were websites you could go to where you could find music sheets specifically made for creating your own versions of popular songs as ringtones, what a time to be alive. 

But now? Mobile phones or smartphones I guess are everywhere, no matter where you are in the world and that’s because of a few things, the first being our need to be in touch with everybody all the time, we’re never more than a button press away from information we need or the people we need to contact nowadays. Secondly, due to increased need as a species, we have found ways and means of making the manufacturing process cheaper.

This means, getting smartphones into the hands of customers, regardless of their financial situation or what they need a phone for is easier and cheaper than ever before. If you REALLY just need a phone to stay in contact with people you can pick up a phone for pennies honestly, but if you’re after something super high-end that can play mobile games, then that is also an option.

Bringing us swiftly onto our final point. Gaming. Mobile gaming has grown as an industry, astronomically. Remember when I mentioned Snake? Yeah, those days are long gone grandpa, me included. Now you can play full-fledged FPS games on mobile, you can play FIFA on mobile, what about games like Pokémon GO? Mobile gaming is HUGE now, in fact…

In China it is estimated that there are around a 700million mobile gamers, which makes sense when you think about it, a lot of this technology is manufactured in China, meaning prices over there are insanely cheap. But not only that, given the huge population, gaming on the go is necessary if you’re wanting to keep to your hobbies, so mobile gaming makes up an insanely huge part of the market and the thing is, with the availability of mobile phones and lack of supply for console and GPU chips, I can only see this share growing drastically.

That’s going to do it for this one! How much do you folks rely on your smartphones? I’ll be completely honest, I’m always glued to mine. I currently find myself going through phases where I’m addicted to Gacha games, chasing that dopamine rush of pulling a good character. We’ve all been there, dating all the way back to Pokémon cards. ANYWAY enough about my addictions, what is it you folks find yourselves doing the most on your phones? Gaming? Watching content? Gambling? Trading? Let us know, we’d love to get a discussion going!