Irish horse betting organization Tote Ireland has launched a mobile gambling application that enables live betting on Irish and British horse racing pools.

Tote Ireland, which is owned by the Irish government, lets customers bet into a common pool with the pool divided by the winners.

The application uses Actus Mobile’s platform m:Cypher. The mobile platform provides secure end-to-end mobile transactions on over 95 percent of mobile phones in the market today.

“After so many years of unmet expectations, gambling is finally going mobile,” said Paris-based Forrester Research senior analyst Thomas Husson, in a recent report on mobile gambling.

“Although it’s not yet the promised El Dorado, and despite the fact that competition is likely to be fiercer in a complex legal environment, several companies currently expect tens of millions of Euros in revenues for 2011 via the mobile platform,” he said.

“Mobile is adding convenience and the ability to provide more immediate and contextual services. Moving forward, the opportunity will not be restricted to smartphones but will evolve to increasingly more social and connected devices, such as tablets and connected TVs.”

Mobile gambling grows
Tote Ireland provides a variety of betting options on the 25 racecourses in Ireland.

By creating a Tote account, users can place Tote bets using the mobile application.

Mobile users can download the free Tote Mobile betting app at www.thetote.com/mobile. It is available for Android phones and the iPhone.

The mobile gambling market accounted for 9.8 percent of interactive gambling and 0.6 percent of global gambling at the end of 2010, according to a recent report from H2 Gambling Capital. The company forecasts that mobile gambling will grow to 12.9 percent of interactive gambling and 0.9 percent of overall gambling over the next two years.

Actus Mobile provides mobile payments technology that has been deployed in an airport in the Middle East, enabling flyers to purchase airline tickets and duty free items from their mobile phones. The company expects to make additional announcements related to mobile payments for other airports as well as shopping centers in Britain and Europe.

“The market is only taking off — attracting lots of new entrants,” Forrester’s Mr. Husson said in the report, Gambling: Bet On Mobile Products And Services.

“But the reality is that regulation issues are causing uncertainty, and, so far, the market is only generating millions of Euros in gross win for the most advanced players,” he said.

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York