Ever since their arrival on the internet in the mid-late 90s, online casinos have been one of the most popular ways to play classic casino games. Surviving the dotcom bust and thriving in the decades that followed, the iGaming market only continues to expand today.
Online casinos are expecting a 12.2% CAGR from 2025 to 2030 according to current market growth statistics, and longer-term predictions are similarly positive.
In an age where so many other web-based businesses are struggling or failing, this raises the question of what online casinos are doing differently. What do online casinos accomplish that others miss, and why do apps form such an important piece to this puzzle?
Looking beneath the surface reveals some curious insight into the smartphone and mobile market, alongside developments that other services could similarly follow in the realm of app development.
The First Ages of Apps
The first online casinos opened in 1996/1997. These were extremely limited by the standards of today, running on a now-defunct platform named Flash. Flash was once the king of most internet multimedia, being the basis of most games and even the original software that ran YouTube.
Flash essentially acted as the basis of the first generation of apps. Online casinos were some of the first to capitalize on this space, both in desktop computing and with the eventual popularization of smartphones via the iPhone in 2007.
The early apps acted a lot like they do today, attempting to offer a more streamlined form of access than the direct website alternative, and online casinos helped lead the market in this direction.
The Arrival and Benefits of the Smartphone Era
With HTML of the time not working especially well with many websites, the downloadable app alternatives through Flash continued to reign supreme. The growing popularity of these apps and their full-fledged early adoption by online casinos proved the potential of app support.
These apps could do what webpages alone couldn’t and, in doing so, raised the public’s perception of what the yet untapped smartphone market could achieve.
Unexpectedly, one of the biggest issues that limited the progress of casino app development was the thing that gave it life, Flash. The platform had become bloated over time, and patching its issues and security flaws meant that developers were abandoning it in favor of ever-advancing HTML5.
Eventually, Flash was discontinued on most platforms, and while it’s still possible to enable Flash Player for Google Chrome and some other browsers, it’s not usually supported natively on many systems. Again, the forward-thinking approach of online casinos to abandon Flash helped pave the way, innovating the use of HTML-based apps as alternatives.
The Modern Day
Without the need for Flash, online casino websites have moved the entirety of their systems to HTML5. This move has generated a huge number of benefits on both the player and developer side of the spectrum, with HTML5 casino services now offering services nearly identical on desktop and mobile browsers.
Apps still exist here, and although they’re not strictly necessary, they still provide enormous benefits for players.
For an illustration of these benefits, consider 2025’s top online casinos like Funbet Casino and Bull Casino. These services are offered on desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets, with a high degree of compatibility and performance even on older systems.
They also offer app alternatives, the best of which can help a website become more popular and appear higher in casino rankings. These apps help make accessing and playing online casino games easier, without the potential burden of browsers standing in the way.
When a player downloads an online casino app, they gain access to a dedicated play environment offering exactly what online casinos think is best.
There are no user toolbars or extensions getting in the way, and this means there are few chances for the apps to act in unpredictable ways. At their cores, these apps provide a more cultivated experience.
If you look at a modern app store today, it’s clear that this direction that online casinos have been chasing for nearly two decades in the mobile space is the new status quo. Practically every major business now has a dedicated app, and a lot of this is because of online casinos constantly proving the strength of the approach.
Developing online apps is a collaborative effort, with many industries pulling ideas from others and adapting them to suit different needs. While it’s impossible to say exactly the level of influence that online casino smartphone apps can claim, we do know they have played an important part.
For the streamlining of access, improving the user experiences, and helping ensure consistent performance across many different platforms, online casinos and smartphone apps are more important than they might seem, and their influence on the market shows no sign of slowing.
