Just as it did for the VCR and the early Internet, adult content appears to be driving broadband cell-phone services, especially with Vivid Video and Vodafone hooking up to launch EroTrix games to Vodafone cell customers in Germany, Greece, and Portugal.
Vivid co-founder Steve Hirsch was quoted as saying that EroTrix had 30,000 downloads in its first two months. That might portend comparable success in the U.S. and Britain, but regulatory ambiguity regarding adult and the cell-phone industry – American authorities haven't clamped down on it, but American cell companies haven't rushed toward it, either – have yet to open many doors for American cell-phone porn.
Orange, the French cell phone operator, now offers customers erotic video clips over their phones from a wireless portal, featuring shower and beach clips, with about a quarter of all videos accessed from that portal being the erotic clips, according to several reports.
Those reports also say adult cell-phone content and games are picking up around the world. Cell users in the Asian Pacific – Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia –can start using a new Artificial Life, Inc. game, a virtual girlfriend named Vivienne with whom they can chat. There won't be cybersex or real sex, Vivienne was quoted as saying, but customers "can have exciting conversations about all sorts of things."
One report said analysts believe spending on erotic cell-phone games and other content could top $1 billion this year and triple or better within the next several years. The same report, from Massachusetts-based Strategy Analytics said about 21 million cell phones in Western Europe, 19 million in Asia, and 14 million in North America had video and game content capability—and the company expects those numbers to quadruple by the end of 2006.
Brickhouse Media, which acts as a kind of brokerage between adult-content providers and the U.S. wireless industry, has said there could be at least 3 billion cell phone users by 2010, a potential platinum mine for adult-content providers like Amp'd Mobile, a new operator planning to use Verizon Wireless's network to bring content from Hustler and others to Amp'd subscribers. And Playboy and Playgirl have already announced plans to deliver cell-phone clips in the U.S.
Verizon is not exactly committing to adult material, according to one published report, but it also won't bar customers from getting it from outside sources over their wireless network.
Just how big the actual adult-cell-content market will prove to be is anyone's guess, according to Amp'd chief executive Peter Adderton, but he told reporters it shouldn't be any different than before, when adult content drove earlier technologies.
Others say the market will depend in large part on national attitudes toward porn in particular countries. Hutchison Whampoa's British chief executive, Gareth Jones, told reporters cell users on a bus or subway might be leery of watching a long porn video, but that younger men might feel differently. "It's popular with guys in the pub after a few beers," he was quoted as saying.
On the other hand, China may have launched a crackdown on electronic porn beginning midway through 2004, but various reports indicate the Communist country is still hard-pressed to keep people, even cell phone users, from getting their hands on the material.
