It was almost two decades ago when a software engineer has included a small piece of code into the operating system of the Nokia 6110 software. It was a small game called Snake, where players needed to guide a string of pixels all over the screen, gathering food to grow it longer. While he may not have known it, the engineer – Taneli Armanto – has placed the foundations of a multi-billion dollar industry. Online gambling, in turn, is an even older phenomenon. The first online casino was launched in 1994. There is no record of when the first mobile casino game saw the light of the day, but such games were released for Java-capable phones for years. But the real revolution in mobile casino gaming happened after 2007 – ten years after Nokia’s Snake was created – with the release of the iPhone.

Eight years have passed since the launch of the first generation iPhone, and the mobile gaming industry has undergone a huge evolutionary process during this time. Today it is estimated to be worth up to $25 billion a year. But this number does not include the revenues generated by real money gambling games, or as we like to call them, mobile casinos.

To form an idea about what a mobile casino is, visit the Royal Vegas online casino using your iPhone or iPad’s browser. The casino offers its players a collection of almost 100 titles optimized for use on touchscreen devices. The games at the mobile Royal Vegas casino run both on Flash and HTML5 supporting devices. Its mobile platform offers players a secure environment, perhaps the most secure in the whole online gaming industry. No wonder – casinos like the Royal Vegas are required by law to be as secure as possible, considering that they are dealing in real money gaming. And the Royal Vegas stands out of the crowd due to its helpful and responsive customer support, large game collection and strict security policies.

But gambling on the iOS platform has not reached the pinnacle of its evolution just yet. Microgaming, the developer responsible for Royal Vegas’ games and software, is constantly exploring the new opportunities offered by the latest innovation in technology. The company is constantly working on innovating the genre and it has showcased a whole new concept for completely immersive gaming, using the newly introduced virtual reality hardware. So in the future, it will really feel that you are there when you start playing a casino game on your computer, video gaming console or iOS-powered device.

If we combine today’s casino software – which allows players to play against real dealers, making use of video streaming – with the virtual reality hardware of the future, I think we will soon witness the launch of the first virtual casino which will look just like one in the real world – only we won’t have to put on pants to play at it!