Telephones seem innocent enough, but they’re not: Affair-consumed lovers whisper into them, revenge-fueled mob bosses bark into them, and gamblers and drug dealers rely on them for business. So the phone’s prowl into the naughtiest of underworlds – hard-core pornography – doesn’t surprise.
But go ahead and register shock, because very soon, you might find the person next to you leering at his cellphone, watching something you never knew naked people did together. Or maybe you’ll walk down an aisle in the supermarket and hear a “moan tone” – an erotic ringtone.
Internet-enabled phones, once the possessions of wealthy geeks, are becoming the norm. That, combined with the introduction last year of the video iPod, has convinced some adult-business entrepreneurs there’s a financial future in pocket pornography.
“Before you walk out the door every morning you make sure you have your keys, your wallet and your phone,” says L.R. Clinton Fayling, president of Brickhouse Mobile, a Denver mobile adult entertainment business. “It’s personal, and it’s always with you. It’s one way to reach a consumer no matter where they are, in traffic, at work, or sitting in their hotel room in Las Vegas.”
Old enough for porn?
The porn industry generated about $12.6 billion in revenue in 2005, according to an estimate by Adult Video News, the industry’s trade magazine. A recent study by telecommunications analysts Juniper Research says mobile adult content hauled in a little more than $1 billion in 2005, and that figure will rise to $2.1 billion by 2007.
“Mobile phones will create a more mainstream opportunity for what we call late-night entertainment,” says Ian Aaaron, a former president of TV Guide who now is president and chief executive of Waat Media, a mobile entertainment company that develops adult content.
The company sells a range of offerings to mobile-phone users in 22 countries, including the United States, but most sales are overseas. The domestic market, he says, remains largely untapped.
The biggest hurdle is making sure consumers are of a certain age.
“The issue has been the carriers getting comfortable with things like age verification and how it’s going to be monitored,” Aaaron says.
For now, wireless carriers in the United States have agreed not to provide adult content until they have established a classification system, says Joe Farren of CTIA-The Wireless Association, the wireless industry’s trade organization, in Washington, D.C.
“More and more people are gaining access (to the Internet on their phones) and we think that is a wonderful thing,” he says. “What we want to do is give people the tools they need to manage content, and that’s our responsibility. What they want to look up, what they want to do on their mobile phones, is their business.”
People in America today can and do watch pornography on their new Internet-ready phones, but they generally pay with credit cards, which can be time-consuming and cumbersome using a phone’s small keypad.
Age of “video snacking”
Providers of adult content are working to get their products “on deck,” meaning X-rated material will be a phone category just like news, sports or stocks. Owning a slice of real estate on a phone is convenient for users because it allows the phone company to bill consumers. Carriers love the arrangement because they split the revenue with content providers.
Once the adult industry has on-deck footholds, mobile pornography in this country will truly take off, says Steven Hirsch, the co-chairman of Vivid Entertainment Group, one of the largest adult-film studios in the world.
Within the next year, he predicts, tame adult content, like scenes of topless women, will debut with carriers’ cooperation.
He and others in the industry say they are hopeful carriers will handle soft-core adult content, but they are less sanguine about the prospect of U.S. carriers signing up for hard-core pornography.
Either way, who wants to watch adult content on something the size of a saltine?
Men, says Aaaron of Waat Media.
“The question is are they going to watch an hour movie? ‘Lord of the Rings’? No. Are they going to watch a scene? Absolutely. And I think that will evolve as well. Call it the MTV age – people are used to doing much more video snacking.”
Where will they watch it?
“On a train, in your office, on a cigarette break,” says Jason Edwards, president of OhMobile in Carson City, Nev., a mobile adult entertainment company. “I can watch (pornography) in the airport and nobody will know unless they are looking over my shoulder, and people don’t do that.”
The iPod’s new thrill
Kathee Brewer, the technology editor for Adult Video News Online, the adult industry’s principal trade magazine, says she recently talked with someone who said he loved watching pornography on his iPod “because you can go into the bathroom at work and do whatever it is you are going to do, then go back to work.”
The restroom viewer may trumpet the virtues of his pocket pornography, but not everyone finds pleasure in this migration of porn from home computers to hand-held gadgets.
“We are facing an avalanche of this kind of material coming onto mobile devices,” says Stephen Balkam, CEO of the Internet Content Rating Association, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that works to protect children from the Internet’s deluge of adult content. “The mobile Internet creates problems that are considerably more difficult, in terms of child protection, compared to the traditional Internet. We’ve been saying to parents, ‘Place your PC in the family room,’ but the kids are now walking around with the Internet in their pockets.”
Consumers have several ways of keeping adult content away from kids. Parents can buy phones that don’t have video capability, says Farren of CTIA-The Wireless Association. Or they can buy an Internet-enabled phone, but ask the carrier to turn off the Internet connection.
But parents might not need to worry just yet because most pornography fans aren’t ready to start watching erotic material on their portable devices, says James Seibert, director of business development for National A-1 Internet in Philadelphia, an adult business that runs a pay-by-the-minute streaming video website.
“We haven’t done this huge push like everybody else, because the market just isn’t there yet,” says Seibert. The connection speeds on wireless devices are slow and the available content is inferior – those two-minute clips, instead of 15-minute scenes, he says. All of these problems, he says, will keep away the bulk of pornography users.
But picture quality is higher on iPods than on cellphones, says Ralph Ceglia, general manager of Red Light District, a large manufacturer of adult movies. The company recently launched iporns.com. He thinks the iPod and like devices could become the mobile-gadget-of-
choice for adult content.
The iPod, he says, “is not going to ring while you’re watching something.”
“That’s just what the guy needs,” he says, “his wife to call while he’s watching a scene.”
Staff writer Douglas Brown can be reached at 303-820-1395 or djbrown@denverpost.com.
