It won’t work in the U.S. outside the Silver State — the only place where sports gambling is legal — but its technology is sophisticated enough to let visitors from other states conveniently place bets while they’re here, even if they’re not inside a casino.

American Wagering Inc. is launching the program for BlackBerry devices in time for the start of college football and the NFL regular season. The public company, which operates nearly 60 Leroy’s Horse and Sports Place sports books throughout Nevada, plans to launch new apps for iPhones, Droids, and Windows-based phones soon.

“I’m all-in on this,” said Vic Salerno, American Wagering’s chief executive. “We’ve reinvented the company entirely.”

Salerno said it took 14 months to develop the application and get it approved by Nevada gambling regulators. Each version for other phone operating systems requires separate approval from the Nevada Gaming Control Board, which will scrutinize their security systems and other features.

The application requires bettors to appear at a sports book in person just once, when first creating their account with Leroy’s.

That allows the company to verify a person’s age and tie their account to one specific phone. When that person then logs into the system, a combination of GPS and cellular tower coordinates verify he or she is within Nevada’s borders before allowing them to place a bet.

Placing bets on sports through phones isn’t new in Nevada, said John English, the company’s senior vice president for business development. A beeper system, affectionately known as a “wager pager,” lets gamblers call in their bets and verify their position through a code sent to the beeper from a limited-range tower, he said.

Salerno and English said custom versions of the apps will likely be offered in future years to major gambling operators like Harrah’s Entertainment, Inc., MGM Resorts International, Las Vegas Sands Corp. and Wynn Resorts Ltd.

Now, it’s been announced that more than $1 million in prize money will be given away in the next year, courtesy of the firm, a joint venture between Branson and Canadian startup WorldGaming.com.

“The video game market is extremely competitive and overcrowded, but we see a big opportunity,” Branson told Game Industry TV, explaining his decision to enter the skill-based gaming business rather than publish software for PC, console or mobile platforms.

The 3G iPhone push means that other smartphone manufacturers (RIM BlackBerry, Nokia, Windows Mobile) will now have to keep pace with iPhone and release similar devices which means in the near future the market should become flooded with powerful mobile devices that can support rich client interfaces and engaging game play rather than a humble SMS, because it’s not very exiting to spend money for a text that says, say, “[3H,5H,8C,QD,KD] you loose, try again”.

One day soon we’ll be able able to gamble and bet on sports from an interactive mobile client that will be a pleasure to use.

If Apple is able to launch a 3G iPhone capable of such speeds, the days of wandering around looking for Wi-Fi hotspots would be over. It could also mean even more innovation opportunities for the application developers. Ideas such as full casino clients with video and graphics running on the iPhone can become as real possibility. As we mentioned earlier, one of the three things holding back mobile gambling is graphics and user interface of phones and connection speeds to deliver a great user experience.

Of course, as we’ve seen with the EDGE network, theoretical speeds and actual speeds are two different things. Any next-gen network will only be as fast as the infrastructure AT&T builds for it. According to AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson, the 3G iPhone will launch in 2008. He didn’t say how much it could cost admitting that Jobs and Apple “will dictate what the price of the phone is.”

3 Card Poker is a popular table game because it is easy to learn and fun to play. Played with a standard deck of 52 cards that is shuffled before each game, 3 Card Poker consists of two games in one — the Pair Plus game and the Ante game — which can be played together or as individual games.

The launch of 3 Card Poker on Spin3′s interactive platforms follows the recent launch of Pub Fruity, and joins classic games such as Roulette and Blackjack as well as slot and scratch card games in Spin3′s growing mobile casino games portfolio.

Matti Zinder, Head of Spin3, says: “Spin3 is committed to providing the very best quality and variety of mobile casino games to its clients. Our 3 Card Poker game is easy-to-follow because it is intuitively designed and comes complete with terrific graphics. With 13 mobile casino games, Spin3 is at the forefront of developments in the mobile casino industry and offers one of the most compelling portfolios of mobile casino games around.”

3 Card Poker will be available to Spin3 customers currently utilizing the GameWire(TM) platform for their mobile casino systems over the next few months.

Warwick Bartlett Lead Partner of Global Betting and Gaming Consultants (GBGC) in his opening presentation to the M for Mobile Conference in London on Tuesday 22nd January said that a combination of three crucial factors was creating a perfect storm of opportunity for the Mobile Gambling Operators.

• He cited better mobile phone handsets and the innovative devices such as the Apple iPhone as being more functional and sophisticated with better screens and keyboards enabling better mobile gambling games and interfaces.

• The traditional on line and offline businesses has reached maturity and the gambling companies were in earnest looking for new products that would reach new consumer segments. Many and in particular the majors like Ladbrokes, William Hill and Bet 365 are investing in mobile gambling and their marketing spend will do much to promote this hitherto neglected segment of gambling and mobile sports betting.

• Finally the software providers had listened to their customers and responded with much more user friendly easier to navigate mobile gambling products.

Quoting from the GBGC’s latest report Mgaming for the Future, Bartlett predicts the market will grow at 26% CAGR up to 2012 with Asia representing 67% of the total market, the UK would take 11% with the Rest of Europe 22%.

However Bartlett warned that with almost 100% penetration of mobile phones in Europe social responsibility is a key issue. The industry must be mindful that a large section of mobile users are under 18 years of age and is not allowed to gamble. Figuring out a way to keep the under age crowd from accessing the mobile casinos remains the largest challenge.

Update: According to GablingCompliance One of the UK’s leading mobile gambling operators has criticized inadequate know your customer protocols, suggesting some mobile phone betting systems are “negligent” and “a scam” in terms of identifying their customers and ensuring they are over 18 years of age. Perhaps figuring out customer’s age will be a bigger problem than anticipated.

With more and more games being adopted to mobile devices, especially smart phones with powerful processors and large screens its only a matter of time before casinos and sport books come out with more mobile compatible content and games. There are already a number of poker games for BlackBerry and BlackBerry sport games.

The Cellufun “Call of the Pharoah” game relies on a pyramid scheme to get other players to join. Cellufun also makes “The Mobile Ring,” a political boxing game where Obama and Clinton can square off against each other. The game has been played more than 2 million times in the past four months.

Clearly, the gaming industry understands the appeal of mobile gaming and that users are becoming much more comfortable playing games on their cellphones. It really shouldn’t be long until cell phone users are 100% comfortable wagering on sporting events and playing casino games on their cellphones.