Putting a dollar value on the mobile porn market

By Stuart Corner
Friday, 05 September 2008 11:02

Opinion and Analysis

Whenever Internet statistics are bandied about the great unmentionable is porn: it's rare to find any admission that it represents a significant portion of Internet traffic and usage. So it's refreshing to see at least one market research company game enough to be explicit about 'explicit' content.

This culture of denial was on full display at the Australian launch of Google's Chrome web browser when Google executives could not bring themselves to acknowledge, even when prompted by members of the press, that people might want to use  Chrome's anonymous  browsing feature 'Incognito' to hide the fact that they have been visiting porn sites. Instead the Google execs suggested everyday Internet activities  like "when you want to buy an engagement ring for your fiancée."

But back to the market research. Unfortunately it's relevant only to South America, and to "adult mobile content" which Signals Telecom Consulting estimates will be worth $US1.12 billion in that market  by 2013. They tell us that  Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela have the best images and video offering," because in other countries " in-house censorship imposed by the operators themselves is...holding back growth of this service."

More details of exactly what criteria are used to judge best content might best be left to the imagination. Signal does not go into this level of detail in its press release, but it all sounds pretty tame.  The study "highlights the fact that the mobile adult content market in Latin America is focused on 'soft' products, with little use of nudes and explicit sex...due to the high censorship barriers imposed by mobile operators themselves in the face of fears that this type of content could cause unwanted legal hassles."

However Signals analyst and report author, Elias Vicente, tells us that "Brazil is the most advanced market...[It] has a large offering by both operators and integrators, backed by a robust local adult industry.  Although Colombia and Venezuela do not have such a strong local adult industry, they do offer a wide ranging offering of image downloads that include complete nudity."

Complete nudity eh! Well that's no big deal in the world of Internet porn, but apparently things are hotting up. "The appearance of amateur explicit sex applications that include footage shot using the web cameras of the novices themselves will be of great importance," Vicente tells us. He continues:  "This will force the industry to react by developing effective parental control models in order to avoid legal problems as well as 'impose' products produced by companies dedicated to the production of adult content."

Does he means that the people behind all the myriad porn sites on the standard Internet will start to develop versions of their content optimised for the increasing number of Internet capable phones? That is bound to happen, if it hasn't already. Well, it should please the operators. Just think of all the data traffic it will create.