NEWS
Italian order books still bulging for VLT vendors
Astro, Bally, Inspired and Merkur are among the latest to benefit from rollouts. Next stop: Greece
Investment continues in the Italian video lottery terminal (VLT) market. The Merkur Inspired joint venture’s Slant Top Evolution cabinet, recently
approved by regulator the AAMS (and the duo’s third VLT cabinet to receive that endorsement), is to be rolled out to venues operated by Sisal Slot, including the Wincity chain of gaming halls. With a widescreen 26-inch top display and a 22-inch touchscreen, the Slant
Top Evolution operates on Inspired’s Open VLT platform. It joins the firm’s Storm and Prospero cabinets on the AAM-Sapproved roster. Said Giacomo Bozzini, General Manager at Merkur Inspired: “We are already
proving with our incomes that this flexibility is the key to success, because different players like different gaming experiences – one cabinet or type of game does not suit all.” Also in the Italian VLT arena, Astro’s Cristaltec operation is to supply games to Lottomatica Videolot Rete, one of the biggest VLT operators, through the Lottomatica subsidiary Spielo. Astro will provide five different games for 2600 machines on a profit-split basis. Bally Technologies, too, will later this year start delivery of 800 games and systems to Lottomatica, bringing the Bally order book for Italy to more than 5000 devices. Across the Ionian Sea, meanwhile, the next big European market for VLT technology and content suppliers (who also have North American territories to serve, notably Illinois) will be Greece. There, the partially state-owned gambling monopoly OPAP will roll out up to 35,000 machines – many more per capita than in Italy, where about 55,000 licences were granted for a population roughly six times that of its smaller neighbour. Economic gloom doesn’t, it seems, put a damper on Mediterranean gaming mania.
Consumers repelled by poor mobile sites
Everything that’s good about m-commerce can become bad when design fails, research finds
Almost all consumers who have tried to conduct mobile transactions have run into technical problems, and the negative impressions these leave are tarnishing the reputation of the brands involved, according to new research that highlights the urgency of improving the m-commerce customer experience. Its findings will be significant to the increasing number of gaming operators who see not just the Internet but specifically the mobile Internet as the next big platform for gambling and betting.
“The mobile customer experience leaves much to be desired,” says a report
from Tealead, a specialist in customer-experience management and customer- behaviour analysis. “In what should be convenient and simple, 83 per cent of adults who conducted a mobile transaction in the last year said they had experienced a problem. These issues go beyond connectivity and download speeds – the mobile experience itself is fraught with obstacles that keep consumers from accomplishing their goals.” A large majority of consumers expect to be able to complete a mobile transaction on the first attempt, found a survey conducted earlier this year in the US and UK for Tealeaf by Harris Interactive. Indeed, around half of them expect using a mobile device to be a better experience than transacting their busines in a bricks-and-mortar venue or online, a perception which Tealeaf VP Geoff Galat said may be partly attributable to the famed ease of use of Apple’s iPhone and iPad. But in reality they are thwarted by problems including usability issues, getting stuck in endless loops, login difficulties, and malfunctioning search. As a result, about two thirds of consumers are deterred from dealing via other channels with the brand that disappointed them on mobile. Thirteen per cent would even go straight from the failed transaction to a competitor’s mobile site or app. And customers whose transactions have not gone through successfully are likely to spread the word among friends and via social media. In short, the major benefits to the operator of mobile transactions are transformed rapidly into disbenefits when things go wrong. The survey found that in both the countries it covered, around 20 per cent of adults had conducted at least one mobile transaction in the previous 12 months – although the proportion was significantly higher in the UK than in the US. Typically, however, those who use mobile for transactions engage in far more than one per year. The average was around one a week, with shopping the most common type, distantly followed by financial and travel. If gaming’s to climb the list, operators will need to heed this research’s findings.
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