The rise and rise of the tablet

With tablet sales continuing to rocket, Julian Rogers explores how the rise of these devices is impacting the way the industry approaches betting and gaming?

It’s January 2010 and Apple supremo Steve Jobs has just stepped off stage after the grand unveiling of the latest device to roll off the company’s conveyor belt – the iPad. It had been a customarily polished, hands on demonstration of the device’s capabilities by the late CEO. But despite the fanfare and vaunting, Apple’s slate was met by a decidedly lukewarm reception from tech journalists and bloggers who were left to ponder its relevance.

Some scribes dismissed it as merely a pricy, oversized iPod Touch, not to mention an impractical computing device. Fast forward four years and Apple has racked up over 170m in global sales of its iPad and iPad Mini, while a myriad of smartphone and PC manufacturers, and even supermarkets, have been knocking out tablets left, right and centre to compete with Apple. Tablets have now overtaken PC sales, and retailers were anticipating 1m of these handheld devices to be sold in the UK last Christmas alone.

This tablet surge shows no sign of slowing down, with Gartner predicting the worldwide tablet market to swell by 47% in 2014. Tablets appear poised to take centre stage this year, which means egaming companies are increasingly focusing their attention on developing tablet-specific apps and products optimised for the bigger screen rather than carbon copies of the smartphone offering. In essence, the key online channels are now desktop, phone and tablet as opposed to desktop and that nebulous area, ‘mobile’.

Room with a view

The problem with the ‘mobile’ tag is most tablets hardly ever leave the home, and are often used as ‘second screens’ in the living room. In some cases it’s a ‘first screen’ too. The BBC recently announced viewing of its live and catch-up service iPlayer on tablets overtook PCs for the first time, which coincided with the surge in Christmas sales. Users also tend to use their home Wi-Fi, and are more likely to download more, and larger, apps, while Wi-Fi creates a smoother experience for tablet usage. Because of tablets’ form factor, and the fact that the devices are mainly used at evenings and weekends, users play longer mobile gaming sessions on tablets as opposed to the ‘snacking’ activity on smartphones.

“It’s important to think about what you can offer tablet customers as a way to enhance what they might be doing,” suggests Brett Wickenden, technical operations director for app developer Mubaloo. “For example, if they are watching sports then it might be having different feeds available in one place or providing real-time betting opportunities.” Naturally, the additional screen real estate over a smartphone is an obvious bonus for developers. For example, it enables better integration of live streaming within a sportsbook product and richer and more immersive UX for casino, poker and bingo games.

Andy Harris, commercial director at gaming supplier Realistic Games, says: “We can offer a Blackjack game with five boxes, rather than three or one, which obviously has a positive impact on revenues. On roulette, it has allowed us to provide an ever-present racetrack for players to place French and neighbour bets, to display the number history and highlight the numbers you’ve bet on whilst the wheel is spinning.” It means that tablet casino gaming can be on a par with the features and realism found on desktop products, as well as having the interactive element of the touchscreen. And with mobile approaching level pegging (accounting for 40% of BetVictor’s casino revenue), the right tablet product can be a key differentiator in this crowded market.

Reinventing the wheel

Paddy Power product manger Jamie Reeve says tablets have been “somewhat neglected” to date, with most operators concerned with having a mobile presence that ‘lumps phones and tablets in the same category’. The extra screen space makes tablets much more akin to laptops than phones and so there is no excuse not to provide a complete touch screen experience for users. Amazon and eBay wouldn’t get away with a blown up version of their phone apps as customers expect a superior experience on the larger tablet screen.”

Paddy Power launched a games tablet app last year and is set to unleash a range of in-house created apps in the first half of 2014, with an emphasis on tablet gaming. A tablet-specific sportsbook app launched in January, and Reeve expects it to be used as a “companion app” to monitor odds and place in-play bets, as opposed to placing a bet on a smartphone and exiting the product. “I think it will raise the bar in terms of what customers expect from a betting product on tablets.”

On the gaming side William Hill and BetVictor are also expected to launch casino apps specifically for tablets. And it’s a similar situation at Unibet, with casino and poker products tailored for the bigger screen launching in Q1. Robert Smith, head of new channels, says the tablet is unquestionably its own egaming channel and that it’s vital to design for the form factor rather than adopting a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.

“To date the industry hasn’t really maximised the potential of tablets as the concentration has been very clearly on the explosion in mobile gaming, but we expect that to change markedly this year. The mobile offering is maturing, and in doing so becoming more homogeneous as companies better understand what their customers want, tablets offer a new opportunity for differentiation.”

Tablet growing pains

UK-based Sky Betting & Gaming recorded strong tablet revenue growth over the past few months, so the on-going focus will be on designing, building and implementing “bespoke tablet experiences,” says Andy Burton, director of technology at Sky Betting & Gaming. “The combination of bigger screens, faster processors and more bandwidth all mean we can provide a richer experience for our tablet users compared to mobile. We don’t need to worry about scaling back the product for speed, and have more options for adding excitement.”

Tablet gaming apps of course aren’t new. The Paddy Power developed mobile casino Roller was created specifically for iOS devices. The app, which really comes into its own on the iPad, has won praise for its innovation and interactivity across the 20-strong portfolio of games (players can spin the roulette wheel and launch the ball with a finger swish). And it’s won many industry admirers with Playtech working on a similar interactive casino product that will harness tablets’ intuitive controls.

The Israeli firm is also heavily promoting its live mobile casino product of late. Indeed, live casino on mobile devices, especially tablets, is shaping up to be a significant growth area for operators and the suppliers. Helen Hedgeland, managing director of live casino provider Evolution for the UK, says tablets are ideally suited to the product and that users play for longer compared with those on smartphones. “Tablet usage, perhaps because it is more closely aligned currently to Wi-Fi access, often mirrors PC usage in that players have consciously allocated time to play live casino.” Social casinos operators are also increasing focusing their efforts on tablet-optimsed apps. Plumbee, responsible for Mirrorball Slots, confirms that session lengths are noticeably longer and monetisation rates higher with tablet players.

“We are currently working on a new product, where tablet is a key consideration, which means a lot of focus on tablet-specific UI and UX,” explains co-founder and CEO Raf Keustermans. “We are not the only ones in the industry taking this approach; quite a few other studios have already launched tablet-first or tablet-only apps in the last months, and it’s becoming more and more the norm to have a different tablet version with different UI and UX for many apps.”

Droid attack

Tablets have become a pivotal egaming platform and a key driver is the sheer array of Android-powered tablets devices at various price points flooding the market. These range from premium 10- inch offerings like the Sony Xperia Z through to mid-range tablets such as the Google Nexus and then there are wallet-friendly options from Argos and Aldi. There’s also the ‘world’s cheapest tablet’ – the UbiSlate 7 by Datawind – which costs just £30.

Tesco’s seven-inch Hudl, at £119, shifted 300,000 units in the first two months following its October launch, with a significant proportion of these probably winding up in Christmas stockings. Added to the mix are different iterations of iPad and the likes of Microsoft Surface Pro 2 and Nokia’s Lumia tablets running Windows OS, creating even more tablet fragmentation. “It isn’t going to get any easier,” says Harris. “One size most definitely does not fit all, much as I wish it did.”

To better illustrate the point, Microgaming reported that last October 1,000 different screen sizes and resolutions (including smartphones) accessed at least one of its HTML5 games.  And it’s set to grow. Researcher Canalys expects Android to overtake Apple in the worldwide tablet market in 2014 and snag a 65% share of sales with the low-cost devices fuelling much of this lead.

Limits and challenges

However, of course, Google’s ban on gambling apps in the Play store is a fly in the ointment, exacerbating app distribution challenges. This major headache, together with Android’s growing share of the tablet pie, could perhaps force operators and developers to deviate more towards the ‘write once, deploy everywhere’, but somewhat inelegant, option of HTML5. Because tablets are invariably used more for web browsing than smartphones, this could be beneficial to those companies with a heavy HTML5 development pipeline. As discussed previously in eGR Mobile Intelligence this is not without its issues, however.

Harris says there are clear limitations when developing HTML5 games for tablets compared with Flash on desktops. “HTML5 wasn’t designed for complex game development and, therefore, however hard you push it to accommodate your requirements, it’s not going to deliver the same quality of game experience as its Flash equivalent.” Likewise, Keustermans adds: “The technology required to create and launch a smooth, fast, stable app is still fairly different from web technology, though. And the fact that tablets are touchscreens also requires a different approach; we have seen most companies who simply tried to port their web product to tablets fail. It’s important to have a different product that is really designed for tablet users.”

Sky Betting & Gaming has ploughed resources of late into rebuilding its Sky Vegas games in HTML5, but it hasn’t been without its challenges, says Burton. “This has been a real education piece for Sky and our third party suppliers because although the gaming engines can be repurposed, the front ends had to be built from scratch. Plus there is the added complication of catering for different screen sizes and touchscreen interfaces. And we’ve had real headaches supporting OS upgrades with iOS7 in particular introducing some major challenges to overcome due to how the new Safari menus interfered with our UX.”

The onward march

Development challenges aside, 2014 is set to see the tablet continue on its march to becoming a truly mass-market device and familiar fixture in people’s homes. The expanding product range, increased specs and proliferation of low-cost devices will contribute to a bumper year for tablet sales, which could edge it further away from smartphones. “Data has shown for some time that tablets were going to replace laptops and desktops as the connected devices of choice in the home,” says Reeve, “so I don’t think anyone will be surprised to see the usage figures jump again going into 2014. The interesting data will be how it splits out between the different manufacturers and devices to guide development priorities.”

Harris says those operators and suppliers bereft of a specific tablet strategy will “miss out on the undoubted rewards up for grabs” and are in danger of being completely left behind. Neill Whyte, head of product channels at Microgaming, adds: “As tablets become more powerful, this presents a significant opportunity for us to produce bigger, more intricate and more immersive games – and this is where tablet-specific product development comes into play.”

The naysayers of the original iPad might be eating humble pie now when you consider what a game-changing and disruptive piece of tech the tablet has become. But as Jeremy Longley, CTO of PKR, suggests, reacting to the fickle and fast-evolving mobile space is just part and parcel of today’s mobile-focused egaming industry. “If in five-years-time everyone has swapped their phones and tablets for Google Glass then we might be in a bit of trouble. But we would have to adapt and that’s what being in the technology business is all about; it’s predicting and reacting to what happens, which keeps you on your toes.”