Grace Ashiru
Regarding the issue of the evolving gambling behavior of athletes, there seems to be a fact that more has changed in the past five years compared to the preceding fifty years. In traditional gambling games, people would make their bets either through the gambling shop or via the convenience of their homes from their PCs. However, currently, one is able to gamble using a phone while watching the game. Such an evolution has been evident in many bookmakers in online gambling platforms like Afropari, where 78.3% of the gamblers use mobile phones. The shift is structural and the numbers behind it are clear.
The Scale of the Mobile Shift
From the statistics provided above, it becomes clear that by 2024, 68% of the entire population of the Earth will use smartphones. This number alone demonstrates the changes that occurred in the technological sphere within the past decade. Rather than presenting us with another new invention, the smartphone made all other gadgets obsolete, while also accelerating the rise of mobile-first industries such as betting on sports, where users increasingly place wagers directly from their devices in real time.
The growth rate of digital service industries is 12.9% per year, while mobility is regarded as a basic driving factor behind this process. As an example, one can note the motion picture industry which increases its growth by only 3–4% each year. However, sectors like online betting are expanding even faster due to constant user engagement, live data integration, and instant accessibility. The way of approaching the development of new services has also changed – instead of designing apps for desktops and later porting them to mobiles, software development companies now focus on the creation of mobile-oriented products, particularly in areas where speed and convenience, such as betting platforms, directly impact user behavior and revenue.
Real-Time Technology and the Always-On Device
This is how real-time interactivity within the virtual world would develop using the smartphone, a phenomenon not experienced by any other technological medium up to this point. As long as the computer remains rooted to its environment, the smartphone is always on the move according to the movement of the user, who is connected at all times to streams of live information.
This is because the whole dynamics of information gathering has changed. Whether it is news updates, game scores, financial information, or traffic or weather reports, an individual now has access to this information instantaneously irrespective of whether or not he is actually present in the immediate vicinity of the phenomenon. This makes it all clear why this technological innovation has been extensively researched over the past decade.
What the Mobile Era Produced for Product Design
The dominance of mobile has driven profound changes in how digital products are designed and built:
- Interface simplicity: smaller screens forced designers to strip away complexity, producing cleaner, more focused user experiences across all platforms
- Touch interaction: the shift from mouse and keyboard to touchscreen fundamentally changed how interfaces are structured and how users navigate them
- App ecosystems: the rise of dedicated applications rather than browser-based tools created entirely new distribution models and business categories
- Notification architecture: the ability to reach users proactively rather than waiting for them to return to a product changed how companies build engagement
- Personal data: the smartphone, carried everywhere, generates far richer behavioural data than any desktop device ever could, transforming product development and personalisation
How the Numbers Have Moved Over Five Years
The table below shows how mobile’s share of digital engagement has grown alongside the broader market:
| Year | Online share of total market | Mobile share of online activity |
| 2020 | ~45% | Minority of online users |
| 2021 | ~50% (overtook offline) | Growing rapidly |
| 2023 | ~57% | Majority of online users |
| 2024 | ~60% | 78.3% of online users |
| 2034 (projected) | Growing to $68.6bn market | Mobile-first by default |
The numbers confirm what the technology industry already understands instinctively: mobile is not a channel within the digital economy — it is the digital economy, with everything else organised around it.
The Future of Infrastructure: Moving Toward 5G and Edge Computing
Whereas going mobile, it will require infrastructure development in terms of physical as well as virtual connectivity to connect the entire globe. Since there is an increasing demand for response in less than a second, there has been a transition from data center to edge computing. The data calculations have been done much closer to the users; therefore, the latency period has reduced from 100 milliseconds to less than 10 milliseconds.
Apart from improving performance, 5G technology has become popular all over the world. According to estimates, by 2030, more than 5 billion connections through 5G would be in place. The speed capacity of 5G connections is 100 times faster than the 4G connection. Such advancements in the technology sector would enable the mobile phones to conduct the computing process as fast as any other device.
