The iPhone is without doubt the largest selling single mobile device in the world and is particularly popular in Australia. Apple’s flagship product has been around in the country for several years and now boasts millions of users. As mobile casinos have continued to increase in popularity, often turning people away from both land based and desktop alternatives, many players have combined their passions for gambling and the leading handset to enjoy their favourite games on the move.

Here are our recommended casinos for playing on the iPhone:

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	Go to Casino.com Mobile	Review: Casino.com Mobile

One way in which the iPhone revolutionised the mobile landscape was with the App Store. No other hardware product had ever featured a dedicated store full of programs, games and other products that were tailored to a specific device, and a whole new industry was created in terms of App development. Hundreds of companies around the world now exist solely to create, market and sell apps to owners of Apple mobile devices. However, gambling has always been something of a sore subject in the App store and here Online Casino Australia looks at why.

Mobile gaming truly began to take off following the launch of smartphones and the fact that the iPhone was among the first means that it has seen its share of mobile casinos popping up. However, Apple has strict policies concerning what is and is not allowed in the store, and gambling apps were one such subject that was rarely breached by developers.

For a significant period of time, “gambling” Apps in the Store were limited to three categories:

• Simulators that offer a realistic gaming experience but use dummy credits for the purpose of gameplay mechanics – players cannot deposit, wager or withdraw real cash.
• Scoreboards or strategy assistants, which are pieces of software that allow players to record their wins and losses or the cards dealt in a game in an effort to build an edge by predicting how the game will go. One ambitious App developer even created an App for card counting in real casinos.
• Strategy guides that are, in effect, digital booklets. They are highly text based and include topics such as blackjack’s basic strategy or various methods of winning on various games whether they are mobile, desktop or land based.

You will immediately notice that missing from this list is the opportunity to play real mobile casino Apps on Apple devices. While the full reasoning behind this is unknown, Apple’s policies dictated that gambling was a forbidden subject, while the simulation of or reference to the pastime was acceptable. Many players felt that this was at best an oversight and at worst a poor business decision, as the sheer popularity of mobile casinos such as All Slots Mobile and Royal Vegas Mobile generate huge sums of revenue, something that Apple no doubt could have found a way to be a part of.

However, times have changed and as the American government looks to relax their own gambling laws, Apple is seemingly poised to do the same. This naturally affects Australian players who enjoy gaming on their iPhone and until now have had to make do with mobile casinos coded in HTML5 that operate within the iPhone’s Safari browser. While these work incredibly well – indeed the aforementioned mobile casinos from 32red and All Slots operate in this manner – offering dedicated apps brings focus on the mobile casinos to a whole new market that do most of their game searching within the App Store itself.