Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2010/10/14/mobile_prawn/

Handheld porn market growing fast

Pocket-based tug-market beats off downturn

By John Oates

Posted in Networks, 14th October 2010 14:57 GMT

Apple might not like it, but smutty services for mobile phones and other devices are still growing strongly.

The market for handheld filth is expected to be worth $2.8bn by 2015, up from $1.7bn in 2009.

Video chat and subscription-based services will drive most of the growth, according to Juniper Research.

Video chat services claim very high retention figures and often charge several dollars a minute giving very high ARPUs - up to $50 or $60 a month. So even with relatively low user numbers these services can quickly make decent money. Juniper reckons such services could account for half of the market by 2015.

The report's author Dr Windsor Holden, said: “In Western Europe, adult areas on operator portals were relatively successful, as were off-portal services billed via PRSMS. As people have increasingly surfed the Internet via the mobile, they’re discovering a wealth of free content – much of it not optimised for the mobile experience, but still more than sufficient for casual users.”

Growth has been marked in the US with the relatively new arrival of bundled data packages for smartphones.

More info, and a splendid and entirely safe-for-work video presentation by two bespectacled and besuited gents in a library here. ®