Mobile Porn Industry: No Viagra Needed!

I read over at CNet this morning that mobile porn today is a $1.6 billion industry.

I read over at CNet this morning that mobile porn today is a $1.6 billion industry.

I read over at CNet this morning that mobile porn today is a $1.6 billion industry.

Furthermore, in the next five years it’s expected to grow to $3.3B, a figure I actually find fairly low, as all the key contributing factors (3G adoption, more smartphones, better quality displays, etc) are all in heavy growth mode.  I still can’t believe it’s already earning that much!  Ready for the kicker quotes?

“Steven Hirsch, co-CEO of Vivid Entertainment, one of the world’s largest adult film producers, said that mobile distribution currently makes up only about 5 percent of his company’s total revenue.”

and

“The lackluster reception adult entertainment has gotten in the wireless market so far […]”

Only 5%?  Lackluster reception?  Wow.  Mobile porn makes more money than the entire Web 2.0 industry (no source for that, but it’s a safe assumption).  Mobile porn is bigger than the entire e-book industry. On the other hand, I guess it’s like saying Mobile Porn is worth about as much as YouTube…

I’m personally not all that turned on by mobile porn (yes, double-entendre, I know), but I’m also surprised at the hypocrisy within US companies on the topic in general.  There’s a general “don’t go there” type of reaction from the press (unless it’s scandalous, in which case we must rush out and cover immediately) as well as Wall Street (unless it’s really a lot of money, in which case try to hide it in the books as “services”).  I have two friends who work for companies which make a decent chunk of their profits because their technologies get used in the adult space, and in both cases the companies can barely discuss the related income. 

NOTE: from this point on, please use your discretion on following links, as many are “not safe for work”.

I wanted to try to figure out what $1.6B represented in terms of consumption of content, so I went looking for some facts and, heh, figures.  Now Telus Mobile recently decided to drop mobile porn services but, they were charging $4/video.  Adult star Tera Patrick just launched “moistmob” (link) which charges almost $3/minute.  Other services can be as much as $25/day for content streaming (source). A quick Google Blog search (term: “Mobile porn”) pointed me to the recent launch of my.iPlayground, a mobile adult content directory with a wide variety of both free and paid-for content, showing similar rates.

• At $25/day, that’s 64 million days’ worth of subscriptions (175K years).
• At $3/minute, it’s 5.3 billion minutes, or 148K days’ worth of consumption.
• At $4/video (2 minutes long each), 4 billion videos were served for 8 billion minutes.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t seem to matter how you want to break it down.  With an estimated 400 million 3G subscribers worldwide (seemingly correct source), if 7% are paying for the porn (source, but its buried in other stats on that page), that leaves 28 million people spending an average of $57 per year to get their porn in the palm of their hands.

Sounds like a pretty sizable market.  Now let’s be sure to stay quiet about it, because the only safe place for mature content in this country is on the magazines in the checkout stands at groceries nationwide, or on primetime television.