Porn Valley- Bloggers and journalists have been all over a Yankee Group study released Monday that predicts a $1 billion global market for mobile porn by 2008.

On the off chance you missed the flurry, let me clarify. Mobile porn is not a big bus that travels to underserved rural areas a la mobile libraries or hearing test centers. Rather, it’s the next logical step for adult content delivery. It’s Time for Reality Porn

On one hand, mobile phones are an ideal content receiver. We carry them with us everywhere we go, and we can send and receive data packets from just about anywhere, too. Despite dead zones — which for some reason seem to include my desk and my bed no matter what city I’m in — phone service is ubiquitous compared with wireless internet.

On the other hand, if you wanted to watch two or more people having sex, they’d have to be very, very small people to fit into a phone display. Even the Treo that I covet tops out at 320 by 320.

The whole point of a mobile phone is to escape the tyranny of the phone cord and talk while we’re out and about. On the train, standing in line, walking down the strand at Venice Beach. That’s the joy and the curse of cell phones — we use them in public. And even when you think you’re being discreet, you never know who might be looking over your shoulder.

I once provided an accidental peep show with my PDA on an airplane. I was playing strip poker on a red-eye flight, carefully angling the display away from my neighbors. About 10 minutes into the game, I realized that my screen was reflecting off the dark window and presenting a clear, magnified picture to anyone who cared to look. Whoopsiedoodle.

While porn in public spaces may be part of the thrill for some, most of us prefer privacy. And you probably have a private space with a more porn-friendly technology like a computer or television — or an iPod.

Apple’s new photo iPod — which one Slashdot wag dubs the iPorn — maxes out at 25,000 pictures or 15,000 songs. It’s a triple-X theater in your pocket, even if it’s only for slide shows. But you know video is next, along with image capture. The iPod already has a microphone attachment that enables you to record audio. (I use it to record the bad country songs I compose in my spare time.)

Cell phones, PDAs, browsers, e-mail clients, cameras and video recorders converged into single handheld devices years ago (did I mention I want a Treo?); the Apple brand will just make it cooler to have one. I imagine the iStudio or iLife is not that far off. Or maybe they’ll call it the miniMac.

When video phones are cheap, data transmission is fast, and airtime charges are a thing of the past, will we have the adult industry to thank? Maybe. Porn may be the killer app that persuades the masses to associate phones with content, which in turn would pave the way for other types of mobile content. (Wired News readers are ahead of the curve on this one.)

But I think the real opportunity here is not pornography at all. The real killer app will take advantage of the No. 1 property of a cell phone, a function even more important than its mobility: the ability to connect people with other people. When I asked the Sex Drive forum whether anyone would pay for cell-phone porn, most said no, or not yet. Not unless it had a “unique twist that really made it stand out for phone,” said one member. Another points out, “Why pay a professional when there are so many enthusiastic amateurs?”

Cell phones are interactive and interpersonal. They aren’t entertainment boxes waiting to receive content to display to a passive user. Until the mobile-content industry finds a way to incorporate personal communication into its porn — perhaps with multiplayer sex games or seamless cybersex — I don’t see us spending a billion dollars on phone porn.