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Adult Content Providers Have Plans for Your Cell Phone, PDA

Posted on: Thursday, 26 January 2006, 15:00 CST

MIAMI _ The latest pitch of the adult entertainment industry: Turn on your cell phone and your cell phone could turn you on.

Porn-on-the-go, or "mobile adult content" _ the industry term for both soft- and hard-core images, video, text and sound for wireless phones, PDAs, and portable Sony PlayStations _ is big business globally, but has lagged in the United States.

That's about to change, according to those on hand at the Mobile Adult Content Congress, which met at the Radisson Hotel Miami through Thursday.

The event could have been mistaken for a gathering of accountants. Explicit content was not allowed in presentations, the literature was relatively modest and, as in most for-profit businesses, focused on ways to generate industry growth.

The overall goal: to make available more "moan tones," Playmates of the day, live text messaging with Webcam girls and other erotic content currently offered in other parts of the world.

Lusting for a piece of what experts say is a soon-to-be multibillion-dollar market, industry executives from Europe, Asia and the United States kicked off on Tuesday the first adult-themed mobile content conference to examine, they said, issues standing in the way of maximum profits.

By the end of the decade, mobile sex content could generate $400 million in revenue, according to Jupiter Research. Globally it could exceed $3 billion. But some argue those are gross underestimates of the market.

Of the $1.2 billion generated last year, $30 million came from the United States, with the bulk coming from Asia.

"Let's face it," said Harvey Kaplan, vice president of mobile-porn giant Xobile. "People aren't going to spend an extra long and extra hard time searching for the next Disney trailer."

Mobile erotica is perhaps one of the hottest issues in the wireless industry.

"The biggest hurdle is age verification and just managing the services," said Jason Healy, president of Funbox.com, an Australian company offering reality-based sexual fare. "We're interested to see how the carriers are rolling this stuff out and how they are going to handle it in the U.S."

Carriers _ think Cingular, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint _ are unable to verify ages of customers and that opens the companies up for lawsuits and the loss of customers who might switch to other companies in protest, Kaplan said.

Cell phone companies "will not get into bed with an adult client because they don't want to tarnish their reputations as being porn peddlers," Kaplan said.

Indeed, Charmaine Woeft, vice president of Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council, said cell carriers were going to have to choose between parents and pornographers. "We are very concerned and we are paying attention," Woeft said. "Pornographers have their own little playground on the Internet; now they are looking to give porn legs."

The big wireless carriers, if present at the conference, were discreet about their participation. David Miller, a representative from Sprint Nextel's new business development and innovation department, had planned to attend, but said he had to cancel because of a scheduling conflict. Dan Garza, president of Black Marlin Media of St. Petersburg, Fla., which organized the event, said several had pulled their speakers at the last minute. Technically, however, wireless carriers do provide adult entertainment and draw significant revenue from it _ albeit indirectly, Kaplan noted.

Anyone with a credit card and a Web-ready cell phone can access adult sites and download or stream videos formatted for their handset. Customers subscribing to Internet service through their phones pay an additional $40 to $80 a month. And about 70 percent of them use it to access porn, Kaplan said.

"Carriers definitely want a piece of that business," Garza said. "It's coming over their networks, so they are already providing it."

Wireless companies could stand to earn significantly higher profits by providing adult content to customers, billing it directly to their accounts and sharing the revenue with content providers.

Retired porn star Ron Jeremy, who recently launched in the United Kingdom rjmobile, an online men's magazine accessible by cell, was at the conference Tuesday promoting his brand.

The mobile revolution, he said, will be a great opportunity for the adult entertainment industry.

"We're bigger than sports. We're bigger than the record industry, but we're still relegated to the back of video stores or zoned out of existence. But in America, we're not going to have hard-core porn until they get age verification."

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(c) 2006, The Miami Herald.

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Source: The Miami Herald

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