The real 3G phone boom: it's about girls, girls, girls

Edie Lush talks to the entrepreneurs behind Britain's latest high-growth, high-tech industry: mobile porn Suppose you have 15 minutes to while away waiting for the train. Why not pull out your mobile phone, punch in your pin number and download a Playboy movie for as little as £5? Not interested? Of course you're not; you're a Spectator reader, for heaven's sake. But there are plenty of people out there who are, and they're not only bringing in revenue for the niche market of mobile porn, they're actually driving the development of mobile technology.

Three years ago, when third-generation mobile phones were first launched in Britain, the joke was that 3G stood for 'girls, gambling and games'. That has proved substantially correct, though it could equally well be 'girls, girls, girls'. One specialist research firm, Juniper, estimates that the market for mobile adult entertainment services will be worth more than £700 million this year, reaching £1.7 billion by 2011 — an average annual growth rate of 19 per cent.

Mobile smut is now available on your handset via every UK network, in varying degrees of ease of access. What is your pleasure? For the firsttime viewer, there are naughty jokes, downloadable screensavers with ladies wearing not very much, or themed games such as Sexy Snake and an )00C-rated version of Penalty Shoot Out. For the more daring there are video dating and chat services. If you're really keen — and you're not worried that your mum might hear your phone ring — you can be alerted to incoming calls by a 'moan-tone' from the dream-girl of your choice.

As Bruce Gibson, author of the Juniper report, reminds us, Britain has a distinct advantage in this market because we have a less moralistic, more liberal attitude than the United States. It is accepted here that there is an audience for lop-shelf products such as soft-porn magazines and DVDs — but there is also a well-established regime to keep adult content out of the hands of those under the legal age. When you overcome your inhibitions and decide to download erotic content on your phone, your age will be verified and you will be provided with a pin number by your network provider.

But why do this on your mobile, with its frustratingly tiny screen? Why not keep your erotic interests at home on your PC? Well, your mobile is with you almost all the time. You're waiting for your luggage at Heathrow and you've finished your Spectator on the plane: why not download a sexy game? Back from the pub and fancy a chat? It takes only a few clicks on your phone to kick off a latenight conversation with the fetish temptress of your wildest fantasy.

As Tim Clausen, director of wireless technologies at Private Media Group, points out, your mobile phone is your most personal device. You may share your home computer with your wife or girlfriend, but you don't share your mobile: you can be confident that it will keep your secret urges secret.

In fact, a recent study showed that one in five people using Google on their mobile is looking for porn. Even more revealing, a search for porn on Google is twice as likely to happen on a phone as on a computer. And around the world people are now more likely to have a mobile than a fixed-line telephone. There are 11 million broadband internet connections in Britain, but there are more than 65 million mobile subscriptions.

As the market for 3G mobile phones grows, so does the market for mobile porn. The world of 3G was once largely characterised by hype and disappointing take-up, but the promise of higher-quality moving images, video chat and faster download speeds is now rapidly winning new customers.

According to Ofcom, 3G mobile adoption in Britain grew by two thirds in 2005.

Worldwide, there are predicted to be 135 million 3G users by the end of 2006, rising to almost 800 million by the end of 2010. Tim Clausen calls the phones being introduced today 'miniature multimedia computers you can talk on'. With the average mobile replaced every 18 months, it won't be long before we all have one.

Add to that the amount of money users are willing to spend on non-voice services, which for Three — the mobile-phone company owned by Hutchison Whampoa — is about a quarter of the average customer's bill. Explore the 'live interactive adult entertainment' sector and you will find the numbers looking even perkier.

CC Media Live offers the chance to see and chat to a lovely lady in real time. Out of 40,000 'chat hosts', around 750 are online at any time, organised into categories such as 'Girls Home Alone — Not So Shy', 'Girl-Girl' and 'Instant Action'. They have names like Eroticmiss and BustyCat and they will do whatever you tell them to do over the phone. An average caller uses the service about three times a month, spending £24 in total.

According to Ashley Clark of CC Media Live, the highest user to date spent £7,700 over six months, and 64 per cent of CC Media's users come back to visit the same chat host. 'The relationship with the girls delivers the user retention,' he says.

So what about the unsavoury characters involved in the porn world? Most phone operators prefer to link up with big brands such as Playboy, Private Media and Hustler — smut you can trust, as it were. And with Age Verification systems becoming more popular internationally, the industry is becoming easier to regulate. According to Julia Dimambro, who runs Cherrysauce, a pioneer of the erotic mobile market, 'a lot of less respectable companies have tried to jump on the bandwagon and they've all been shut down. Minors accessing Cherrysauce would be just as bad news for us as it would be for the regulators.'

Tim Clausen argues that 'adult is going mainstream. Look at Snoop Doggy Dog's videos, or German or Italian TV after 11pm.' Ben Grass, producer of When Evil Calls — the world's first made-for-mobile horror series — adds that promoters of porn are at the forefront of market change. 'They were the first to make money from the internet and they're at the forefront of colonising mobile technology.'

In fact, the only things holding back the industry are the mobile operators. Because of concerns about their own image, they often cloak their adult content. They might promote semi-naked models, but if you want hardcore, you'll have to look elsewhere.

Content providers, however, know that the harder the porn, the stronger the demand. As Julia Dimambro points out, 'Over 80 per cent of the content we deliver to mobile operators around the world is erotica — bikini or babe content. In contrast, three quarters of the content we sell direct to consumers through our Cherrysauce portal is R-18 — which means full penetration and extremely naughty words. There's a clear difference between what consumers want and what the [mobile phone] industry is providing.'

US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart (1915-85) once famously wrote of hardcore pornography that it was difficult to define, but 'I know it when I see it'. Who would have imagined that millions would one day want to see it on their mobile phones, and that a billion-pound industry would spring up to satisfy their needs?

And where might this mobile porn industry lead us? One only has to look at the popularity of online social networks and communities such as MySpace to see where the industry is heading. Informa, which provides business intelligence for the telecoms sector, predicts that community services — uploading photos and videos and chatting about them, and yourself with your community of 'friends' — will generate the most revenue for mobile content providers by 2011 — beating music and mobile television.

Another report from M:Metrics, a Seattlebased firm of mobile-phone market analysts, said that in April 10 per cent of mobile users in England uploaded photos or videos to the web via their mobile phones or used mobile chat or dating services. It doesn't take a genius to see that a new generation of 'Readers' Wives' photos and movies — or User Generated Content as it is more professionally known — may turn out to be the next big thing.