The days of blokes nervously tip toeing up to the top shelf of newsagents for a slice of saucy sleaze look to be growing to a close, as a new report shows the explosive growth of the mobile adult content market.
A new study by Juniper Research predicts that the mobile adult content market is going to soar from $1.4 billion in 2006 to over $3.3 billion by 2011, creating $14.5 billion in revenues over the five year period.
Europe is expected to be the most lucrative market with a 39% share followed by Asia Pacific at 33%.
Back in the day, thrill seeking punters had to settle for text-based titillation, but the roll out of 3G services and more advanced phones has seen a shift to photo and video content, with Juniper expecting video to make up over 70% of mobile adult content market revenues by 2011.
Softcore in the boozer
Bruce Gibson, Research Director at Juniper Research said: “Adult content business models have succeeded in other major delivery media: print, cinema, DVD, PPV TV etc. There is no reason why the mobile channel should not be equally profitable for adult content industry players. The mobile channel will provide a different way of presenting adult content to traditional delivery channels and will reach new audiences.”
“Mobile is about fun and instant gratification,” he continued.
“I think the biggest opportunity is at the casual and “softer” end of the adult market – lads in pubs sharing a video clip after a few pints and people looking for a bit of fun when they have spare time to kill etc – not the hard core stuff.”
Much as we’d love to agree with him, we’d suggest that anyone looking at how the web grew will realise that where there’s money to be had, there’ll be no shortage of hard core pr0n.