Porn pundits around the world predict that cell-phone porn could potentially outperform Internet porn in the future. The phenomenon could have a big impact on the industry in the U.S.—if telephone carriers become willing to let adult content traverse their airwaves, that is.
Brickhouse Mobile hopes that some companies will be willing to take the plunge, and sooner rather than later. The company has signed a licensing deal with Wicked Pictures to bring Wicked content to mobile phones. Brickhouse will act as a kind of broker between the adult-entertainment production studio and the mobile-phone carriers—ensuring that the deals will include agreements that the adult studios will obey the prospective carriers’ standards and practices, for example.
“Wicked is one of the leading adult-film studios,” Brickhouse president Clinton Fayling told Wired last week, adding that his firm has similar plans to work with several of what he considers the top-tier adult companies. Brickhouse plans to develop cell-phone content from the Wicked inventory of stills and video and work with the studios to make custom content like ringtones featuring Wicked contract stars and imagery shot specifically to cell-phone formats.
“We believe mobile will have a bigger impact on the adult industry than even the Internet,” Brickhouse told the magazine. “We are going to work with carriers and abide by their standards and practices. For the U.S. market, that means featuring Wicked contract stars in lingerie and bikinis. Internationally, we will offer nude content.”
Fayling said that mobile is the truly personal device the computer really isn’t, since a computer can be used or seen by any member of an owner’s household whereas his or her cell phone can’t be, which is a primary reason why cell-phone porn stands to be a potential boom market.
“[T]he phone is something that rarely leaves the owner's sight,” he told Wired. “The viewing experience is different, but mobile content is intended for short periods of viewing time. Internationally, acceptance has been swift. It has been slower in the U.S., because we've been spoiled by broadband. But we will catch up.”
He also said universal accessibility–a cell phone able to hit the Net anyplace, and even more readily than a computer–is another key asset, not to mention adult-entertainment buyers willing to try anything at least once. “If typical adult consumers access the Internet via their PCs, why wouldn't they do the same wirelessly? The only factor that could skew the numbers is the type of adult content that can be accessed via your mobile phone,” he said. “We are playing by the carrier rules, and we understand they want to move ahead cautiously to balance their subscribers' interests and concerns.”
Or, as Wired put it, the concept will likely roll out slowly, with things like moan or groan ringtones featuring familiar adult stars, sexy wallpapers and stills, short video clips of stars in swimwear and lingerie. “But the mobile porn industry,” the magazine said, “expects cell phones to be like cable TV: a little flesh at first, then more–maybe a lot more–as the medium matures.”
