Gamblers have never been phone shy when the time comes to placing a bet, and no sooner had Wap entered the vocabulary this year, than Wap betting became a topic of conversation.

The surprising thing for Wap sceptics is that it already works quickly and effectively and a simple fixed-odds bet can be placed from an existing account in less than two minutes.

Ed Andrewes, head of business development for London-based bookmaker BlueSquare, sees Wap betting as an extra opportunity for the punter who is probably already familiar with online gambling from a PC.

"There's pretty much no scenario where a new Wap gambler wouldn't already have access to an internet betting account," he says. "It's not developing the market but penetrating further into it."

In the online gambling world where customer loyalty is non-existent except among the highest staking punters, Wap betting is being driven by the attempts of online bookmakers to build their brands across platforms in a super-competitive market.

"For every new online customer nine will be transferring from another betting company," says Simon Clare, communications director for Coral Eurobet.

The company was the first to launch Wap betting in the UK this summer with a service concentrating on Formula 1, football and golf betting. William Hill, Ladbrokes, Littlewoods, and Irish operators Paddy Power, have all followed. Eurobet is using its sports sponsorship deals with the Arrows F1 team and Manchester United as a lead into the market, but their association with Man Utd's co-sponsor Vodafone and Arrows co-sponsor Orange is helping spread their site across network providers.

As usual in European sport, football is the key to success-and England's new Premiership season is focusing everyone's mind on football betting.

"It's that moment when people are just walking into the ground and they think, 'I've just got time to do a quick bet'," says Angus Murray from Interfocus, the agency which developed Eurobet's Wap strategy.

The Euro 2000 Championships helped Eurobet turnover reach more than £15m a week this summer, but only a small fraction of that was transacted over Wap. The Premiership season should see that change a little, but no-one is expecting Wap betting to take over just yet.

"It'll be viable but probably not wildly successful commercially," says Mr Murray. "There seems to be a pause in Wap gambling development right now - some Wap sites have been rolled out but people are waiting to see what will happen with i-mode and GPRS [General Packet Radio Service, which will offer "alway-on" connections]. We want to do something that's not just filling time before GPRS."

Wap betting fits perfectly into the online bookmaker's big picture of cross-platform betting where a customer can bet on the in-flight seatback screen, on their phone in a taxi, at their office PC, or via their interactive TV at home. And all from the same account.

Littlewood's Bet247.co.uk is looking at an arrangement whereby relatively small-sized wins can be paid out directly in cash from ATM machines, appealing to small-staking punters taking long-odds bets.

"We need to attract the punter who is looking to win a lot with a £5 bet," says Peter Cuffe, internet director at Littlewoods Leisure. The company launched a Wap service on its Bet247.co.uk site in July offering horse racing, football and its Prize Buster game based on lottery numbers in conjunction with BT's Genie portal.

"Our utopia is where you can sit watching the test match at Lords and bet on the 3.30 at Chepstow," says Mr Cuffe. But not all analysts are so positive.

"Very few people are actually using their Wap phones for betting," says Damien Blenkinsopp, a telecoms analyst with the research company Decipher. "And while the big players feel they have to be on all platforms, their online brands still need a lot of repositioning to get away from the image of the not-so-nice retail stores [High Street betting shops]."

As for security issues, a number of companies, such as Sonera SmartTrust, are currently developing PKI (Public Key Infratructure) encryption for phones, but most Wap services do not access funds directly from a customer's bank account - that happens on the HTML sites - so Wap bets are only transacted on the account's periphery with a password and ID number, and the risk is limited.

Regulation and consumer protection also have to be taken into account. In Australia, where online gambling has developed faster than almost any other market, the country's online gaming regulator gives more protection to gamblers than online shoppers in terms of operator background checks and complaint investigation.

In Europe, the best-known online bookmakers make huge efforts to sort out customer problems before they become PR disasters, particularly as many are contemplating initial public offerings (IPOs) in the near future.

"Behind the scenes in wireless betting, nobody is slowing down at all," says Danielle Jones, global business development manager for mobile phone manufacturer Ericsson. "The ones that have wanted to make the early statements have done - the rest are running tests."

Ericsson is continuing to develop one of the longest standing European Wap betting projects with ATG, the rights-holding organisation, that operates horse race betting in Sweden. The service is being tested to allow Wap betting over GPRS.

Australian betting technology provider Access Gaming Systems estimates that 15 per cent of all online gaming will be transacted on mobile devices by 2005, but to put that into perspective, most estimates have the online gambling market attaining a value of at least $20bn by 2002.

The largest share is still expected to be taken by HTML websites and interactive TV betting, but the capabilities of third generation phones could swing those figures further towards wireless gambling.

Ericsson's Ms Jones expects the sophistication of the betting to increase as bandwidth grows through 2.5 generation and 3G phones, and to expand beyond sports betting into more complex games.

"It is going to grow from simple fixed odds bookmaking to include the lotteries, then into bingo and casino games on your phone, and a lot more information will be available if you need help to check the form."

Parts of Asia are the great unspoken opportunity for those with plans for wireless betting. "Nobody's really admitting to it yet, but the region is where gaming will be huge," confirms Martin Belsham, chief executive of BlueSq.co.uk.

China has one of the lowest rates of mobile phone penetration in the world, but there are already 50m phones in that market.

"If you look at Hong Kong, the opportunity there for developing gambling on mobile devices is almost obscene," says Ms Jones.