The number of cellular subscribers in the U.S. now tops 200 million, according to the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, the trade association for the cellular telephone industry. That means 69 percent of Americans use a cell phone. Six percent of U.S. households are wireless-only. Still, those figures pale when compared with international numbers: There are approximately 2.2 billion cell users worldwide, and the number is expected to grow to 3 billion by 2008.
Altogether, U.S. cellular users gobbled up 1.5 trillion minutes of time on mobile devices in 2005, up 36 percent from 1.1 trillion in 2004. They sent 9.8 billion SMS messages in December alone, up 109 percent from 4.8 billion during the same period one year earlier. All of that talking and text messaging grossed $113.5 billion in revenues for carriers in 2005 (up 11 percent over 2004 levels). The data revenues portion of the total grew 86.4 percent from 2004 to 2005, representing a year-end take of $8.6 billion.
Those are some of the interesting statistics revealed during the CTIA Wireless 2006 trade show that took place in Las Vegas April 5-7. The cellular industry is red hot, and no group is more excited about future possibilities in the realm than the adult entertainment industry.
“CTIA was a great show for us and a fantastic show for adult content to finally make the big break into the U.S. market,” says Todd Spaits, chief executive officer of Stripe Media Inc. (parent company of YanksCash). “We had several discussions with many of the largest mobile network operators in the U.S. as well as some prominent online companies who currently focus on database and transaction security. Unfortunately, at this time the particulars of these companies and their future adult content plans are off the record. However, I can say that these companies sought us out for our thoughts and are nearing the end of their fact-finding stage as it pertains to adult content.
“In other words [adult content] is coming soon to a phone near you.”
As increased competition continues to drive per-minute pricing down in the voice communication end of the cellular industry, carriers look for data applications to pick up the slack. U.S. carriers invested a cumulative total of $174 billion in infrastructure through the end of 2004 and sunk another $25.3 billion into improvements in 2005. That’s a lot of money to recoup. Although voice remains the dominant application in the wireless space and the primary driver of new subscriptions, data applications – like mobile TV; mobile email; music, video, and game downloads, and dating and “community” activities – are predicted to be big moneymakers for carriers in the very near future.
Brickhouse Mobile President Clinton Fayling says he expects adult entertainment to begin showing up on carrier decks sometime this year, albeit in softcore form. “[At CTIA], there was much more energy—more people are thinking about [new ways to deliver new kinds of content], and some of those people are actually trying to address it,” he says. They’re not actually mentioning adult content per se, he hastens to add, but they’re discussing and developing all sorts of services and add-ons that will have direct application to the adult industry. Community applications that allow end-users to connect with each other and their adult-industry idols hold much promise for the adult entertainment sector—as long as they’re handled discreetly and responsibly, says Fayling: “There’s a different set of rules on the phone.”
Friend Finder Inc. Mobile Champion Harvey Kaplan was impressed by the new mobile video technologies, and he says he can’t wait for them to be available locally. “There was a very minimal adult industry presence at the show, and most of us were there to check out the new technologies,” he says. “The latest thing is DVBH, or satellite TV broadcast to a radio receiver within a mobile phone. It’s tremendously interesting, and the potential is unbelievable. It looks to me like we’re going to completely skip over the downloadable video stage [in the U.S.], and go directly to DVBH. There’s no latency with that system; it’s just like watching live TV.
“The [mobile] phone will be the next set-top box,” Kaplan predicts. “Just plug it into the TV, and watch whatever you’ve subscribed to. Now that’s exciting.”
