Is the cell phone the next frontier for erotica?

 

Mr. Smith is sitting on a city bus, stuck in traffic. Bored, he decides to see what Sandi's up to. Within seconds, Sandi's smoldering gaze is on the screen of his cell phone, her face hovering above a low-cut blouse. Her breathy voice is in his earpiece: "Oh, Mr. Smith! I'm so happy you called!"
 
"Good to see you, too," says Mr. Smith, and he means it.
 
"What would you like to do today?" asks Sandi.
 
The traffic is moving again, and Mr. Smith realizes he won't have as long for the call as expected, so he skips some preamble.
 
"You look kind of warm in that blouse," he says.
 
"Oh, you're right! It's hot over here," says Sandi, and proceeds to remove her top.
 
Mr. Smith smiles.
 
Who wants to look at pornographic content on a cell phone screen? The answer, in short: many, many people. A recent study examining Google search queries from cell phones found that adult search terms like "sex," "porn," and "playboy" were the most frequent.
 
Researchers from Columbia and Carnegie Mellon Universities examining queries from cell phones on a major American carrier within a one-month period in 2005 found that erotica was targeted by more than 20 percent of searches, making it the largest single search category. Arts and literature, food and drink, shopping and consumer services, and news all scored less than two percent each.
 
Adult entertainment has helped popularize technologies such as the VCR, DVD, and broadband, and many have predicted its expansion into mobile. "In terms of content categories, adult is always very popular with new technologies," said Tim Clausen, director of wireless technologies at Private Media Group, one of the world's largest adult-entertainment empires.
 
Is the cell phone the next frontier for erotica?
 
Indeed, mobiles are proving to be a potent distribution channel for adult entertainment; according to Juniper Research, the total mobile adult-content market was worth $1.4 billion in 2006. Formats range from interactive video and SMS chatting to explicit wallpapers and adult-themed games.
 
Industry analysts believe mobile adult entertainment could be big. "We see the [global] market rising to about $3.3 billion by 2011," said Bruce Gibson, research director for Juniper Research. "That figure could actually double...we took a conservative view of this particular segment of the [mobile entertainment] industry," he added.