Mobile porn market heating up

Global revenues from mobile porn and adult services are set to rocket to $3.5bn by 2010, driven by increasing adoption of streaming video and video chat services over 3G.

According to figures released this week by Juniper Research, Western Europe will remain the largest regional consumer of mobile porn, with revenues rising from $775m in 2007 to $1.5bn by 2012.

But Juniper also found that a significant proportion of new revenues are expected to come from the relatively underdeveloped North American markets, despite the existing restrictions on on-portal content.

Juniper analyst Windsor Holden said, “While operators in the US and Canada are still very reluctant to introduce age-verification systems and offer adult content, it is a completely different story off-portal with a number of service providers now offering D2C [direct to consumer] content and services aimed at those markets. Furthermore, as mobile subscribers become more comfortable and familiar with the off-portal environment, then the traffic to these sites is likely to mushroom.”

And while new legislation in markets such as China and South Korea will depress growth in Asia, mobile adult service adoption in Eastern European markets is rising at a higher rate than previously anticipated, thanks to the greater willingness of operators to offer a wide variety of explicit, white label content on their portals.

But while users of adult services are far less price sensitive than consumers of other mobile entertainment services, service providers should be careful not to overprice content.

“While in most forms of mobile entertainment, the brand is king. That truism does not apply in mobile adult content,” said Holden. “The most popular genre amongst consumers is graphic, amateur content. If operators truly wish to maximise their revenues from adult content, then they should provide consumers with a mix of genres, in which white-label content is given equal prominence to that of major brands.”