Wide World of Porn- In the new era of cellular entertainment the phrase “obscene phone call” has taken on a whole new meaning. Pornography is headed to your cell phone, if you want it. It is already arriving indirectly, available to the most assiduous fans who make the extra effort to get to it, but eventually digital smut could reach a far broader audience as one of hundreds of features offered by carriers.
Vivid Entertainment Group, the world’s largest producer of adult films, with annual revenue near $100 million, already offers mobile titillation in 20 countries. Cell porn could provide one-third of total revenue in five years, says Vivid Cochairman Steven Hirsch. “We see it as a huge, huge revenue stream for us,” he says. “We’d like to do it in the U.S. We think by the end of the year some carriers will start allowing it.” But carriers have thus far been reluctant. Vivid had an adult game, Erotrix, up on AT&TWireless (“No nudity, but it was sexy,” Hirsch says), but it was scuttled in the Cingular merger. “They weren’t ready.”
U.S. carriers even balk at selling Jenna Jameson “moan tones” that use, as a phone’s ring, the X-rated exhalations of the porn superstar. “It’s become a quagmire of hypocrisy,” says Dennis Adamo, chief of New York’s Wicked Wireless, the firm behind Jameson’s ring tones. “Carriers think a porn star saying ‘Take me!’ is inappropriate. Meanwhile they’re selling sounds of farts and bong hits.” For now carriers in the U.S. serve up PG-rated fare such as scantily clad women straddling motorcycles. Dwango Wireless is helping Playboydevelop and deliver games, images and voice clips. Cingular sells games of strip poker. Maxim magazine’s Mini Bar provides drink recipes and pickup lines; its Hometown Hotties program sends subscribers a picture slide show from a different gal each day of the week.
Wireless providers in Asia, Europe and Latin America are less shy about sex. The global market for mobile adult content exceeded half a billion dollars last year, says Juniper Research. It could hit $5 billion in five years, Strategy Analytics forecasts. In Europe, Cherry Media offers a game letting cell subscribers create their ideal woman. Blonde or brunette? Thin or with a voluptuous behind? Sweet or naughty? The game then serves up the appropriate photo. Cherry also offers a “Choose your own adventure” game in which players try to lure a woman into bed(they don’t always win). Managing Director Julia Dimambro says her mobile site gets around a million hits each month. Enquire, a mobile-content outfit in Barcelona, offers Mooobile, a site that has contestants pick through online photos to guess which pairs of breasts have silicone implants and match body parts to their owners.
Enquire’s Voooyeur lets exhibitionists post nude photos of themselves. Its Mooobilecontent portal offers carriers a place to buy amateur porn videos. John Delano, head of Enquire, says his strategy is “to be creative around the mobile phone as a sexual device. It’s more than just moving images from the Internet onto the phone.”
Vivid’s Hirsch thinks there is demand for on-demand, live, interactive video on mobile phones. By year-end VividNow subscribers will be able to have video chats with their favorite girls. Eventually they’ll be able to tell porn stars exactly how to make love to the camera. Now that’s entertainment.