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Mobile porn is slowly finding an audience among U.S. mobile users. And network operators are trying to figure out how to cash in.
Adult wireless content is gaining substantial traction around the world as content providers find a market for everything from titillating mobile games to hardcore videos. Wireless adult video is expected to outpace text messaging by 2009, generating nearly $2.7 billion annually, according to recent figures from Juniper Research.
Content providers have found the U.S. market tough to penetrate, though, as carriers have worked hard to distance themselves from racy offerings. Not only are operators unwilling to grant deck placement to anything more suggestive than a Maxim photo shoot, they don’t allow third parties to bill through their monthly statements for the naughty stuff.
Vendors looking to hawk mobile porn must use consumers’ credit cards, which is a substantial hurdle in the world of m-commerce. But there’s little doubt that a significant market exists for wireless porn. A study from mobile-search provider JumpTap Inc. found that searches for adult content accounted for more than one-fifth of all wireless searches powered by the company last December, topping all other content categories. A similar study of Google Inc.’s mobile-search offering echoed those findings, revealing that wireless users were twice as likely to search for porn on their phones than any other type of content.
Operators are taking note of the increasing interest in adult mobile content, and are trying to position themselves to take a share of revenue. One executive from a popular mobile (non-adult) application developer said he noticed the increased attention at CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment 2006 last month in Los Angeles.
“I was pretty amazed at how big the off-deck porn market was; it’s a lot bigger than I thought,” said the executive, who requested anonymity. “And the carriers don’t know what to do about it.”
PhoneErotica.com, a leading adult WAP site, is among the leaders in the U.S. market. The site-which boasts more than 12 million visitors every month-initially gained traction in the United States with free adult content, at times outpacing wireless traffic to MSN.com on one unidentified carrier, according to The Yankee Group.
Six months ago, parent company PhoneBox Entertainment began charging American users $18 per month for access. And while enticing subscribers into using a credit card to pay for the stuff has been a major hurdle, founder Luc Prieur said the company still manages to ring up “a few hundred thousand dollars a year” in U.S. revenues.
“It seems the price itself is not much of an issue for people who want to pay,” Prieur said. “It’s the technology and the interface. They’re not used to paying on the phone with a credit card.”
Like many analysts, Prieur believes operators eventually will partner with providers of less graphic material, granting carrier billing privileges to content companies that deal risque offerings such as bikini-clad models and video clips no edgier than some cable TV shows. Operators in Ireland and Australia are employing such tactics, grabbing a share of adult revenues without soiling their reputations with more explicit offerings.
Meanwhile, vendors looking to sell more hardcore stuff in the United States will continue to force users to dig out their credit cards to sneak a peak, leaving operators safely on the sidelines and out of the revenue stream. But while carriers aren’t likely to embrace adults-only content anytime soon, they’re also not going to alienate porn-loving consumers by shutting down third-party offerings that some may see as offensive, Prieur said.
“Very few carriers in the world are proactive enough to turn off the traffic,” Prieur claimed. “They just want to pretend or make believe they’re worried about users accessing hardcore content. If they really wanted to, they could turn it off.”
