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INDUSTRY ANALYSIS
The state of adult content in the handheld device market
By Jacques LeDisco
About this article
For good or bad, adult entertainment is a substantial driver for new technology and to truly cover new technology in a way that's accurate, some coverage of adult content is honestly necessary. This article, by an expert who's been involved in this field for quite some time, provides a thought-provoking analysis. Frankly, we found the size of this market -- just the portion that's mobile -- to be shockingly large.
As is always the case when our journalistic explorations take us into adult territory (and if you're dealing with new technology, this does happen), we discussed this article at length internally. We do our best to limit exposure to our readers, but since this article has nothing inappropriate in it, rather just analyzes the state of the market, we consider it valid and even necessary news. To protect you, the reader, we have eliminated all links and URLs from this article.
We've dipped our toes into these waters every year or so, have ticked off a few people (very few, thankfully, because of how we treat it), and have given some background to a simple truth: mankind has baser instincts and those baser instincts drive technology. -- David Gewirtz
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As we all know, adult entertainment purveyors have been early adopters of new media, including the printing press, film, video, and the Internet. In fact, adult entertainment products have driven the widespread adoption of media we now all use on a daily basis.
However, because of display limitations on early handheld computing devices, many did not consider adult content on handhelds as a serious market. And yet, British research firm Visiongain, estimates that sales of wireless erotica could reach $4 billion by 2006.
"According to Nick White, an executive at Virgin Mobile, 'Sex represents a big revenue opportunity. We would be naive to ignore it.'"
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In 1999, I decided to test market a nightlife guide: Nite Crawler - Las Vegas. This was a text-only guide to Sin City. Although similar in concept to Vindingo's popular guides, the Nite Crawler guides featured information on strip clubs, casinos, nightclubs, and other adult-only entertainment.
In addition, the nightlife guides also included a help menu, offering information on embassies, detox centers, and emergency rooms, should the party get out of control.
Nite Crawler - Las Vegas was offered as a download on PalmGear and Handango (then known as Palm Central). As there were few mature content titles in 1999, neither site had any restrictions on adult software, other than assignment to the mature content category.
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