Western Europe leading the mobile porn revolution
By Dave Jeyes
The market for mobile adult services grew 36 percent in 2008 to represent a burgeoning $2.2 billion industry. Surprisingly, Western Europe is raking in 42 percent of the global revenue for mobile adult services driven primarily by video chat.
Juniper Research’s recent findings show that the market for mobile porn could top $4.9 billion by 2013. The market may even outpace Juniper’s earlier prediction that total revenue would reach $3.5 billion in 2010.
However, most of these services are still being consumed in Western Europe. It’s hard to say whether this phenomenon is due to Europe’s strong 3G network coverage or cultural openness about sexuality, but it’s clearly leading the charge to bring adult content to the mobile platform.
Comparatively, US mobile users consumed were responsible for only 2 percent of the mobile content consumed in 2008. While this could be due to poorer 3G network coverage, it’s still a stunning gap.
Another setback for the mobile adult services business in the US is a lack of age verification systems. The carriers have been reluctant to implement these systems in the US, possibly to avoid association with the porn industry.
In other regions of the world, adult content is more tightly controlled and less acceptable. Areas such as Indonesia and Switzerland have tightened restrictions on the mobile adult services industry.
While there have yet to be any high profile cases of people being sued or arrested for playing indecent content on their mobile phones in the US, it’s certainly possible. There have been similar cases wherein people were charged for watching porn in their car.
It remains to be seen how Americans will receive the next wave of adult services on their mobile phones. Far beyond the availability of the content is whether it will become socially acceptable to stroll down the street watching porn on your mobile phone.
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February 19th, 2009
I’m not sure, I mean I believe iphones and android phones are more popular in the US right now then EU and I think with the video quality it will bring the porn popularity back to the US with sites like http://ipinkvisual.com. I’m assuming it’s an English site and probably if you asked them it’s mostly US surfers. Some times there porn $ numbers also seem absurdly over-estimated.
April 22nd, 2009
Actually if you take a look at some of the google keyword search terms some of the highest demand is coming from the middle east, which I think is very telling. the more you try to repress something the more people want it.
May 12th, 2009
I agree with Margerine. The lion’s share of high-end smart phones are currently being deployed in the US, and the leading edge of these use a WebKit-based browser (Android, iPhone/iPod).
If you do a bit of, ehem, research you will also find that the majority of the mobile porn services that are cropping up (e.g. http://ifap.to) are designed either exclusively for WebKit devices or give a nod in their direction.
It’s pretty clear a lot of porn is being consumed on iPhone, look at this recent WSJ post on GSM time allotted to bandwidth: http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB124200303430005275-lMyQjAxMDI5NDEyMTAxMDEzWj.html