The deal is the third Brickhouse Mobile has inked this year with adult content providers. Since March, the company has signed pacts to develop and distribute mobile content for New Frontier Media and Wicked Pictures.
Brickhouse President L.R. Clinton Fayling said Randall’s photography catalog of more than 100,000 images and videos, as well as exclusive ringtones featuring the voices of models and adult stars who have posed for Randall, will be available some time this summer.
The deal also calls for Randall to create custom content specifically for the mobile phone environment. Users will be able to access the offerings through Randall’s websites, Suze.net and Suzevideo.com, a newly launched, Randall-branded Wireless Application Protocol site, and via both Java and BREW applications on authorized carriers in the U.S. and international markets.
“We’re a full-service agency when it comes to mobile; we handle everything except shooting content,” Fayling told XBiz of his deals with adult companies. “We consult on the creative, choose the right formats for different carriers and make sure the experience is optimal for each user.”
Fayling also stressed that Brickhouse works closely with industry associations, carriers and government organizations to ensure all content complies with U.S. and international standards and uses both credit card verification and user registration to prevent the content from being viewed by underage users.
Though they have been slow to gain ground in the U.S., wireless adult products are big business in Asia and Europe, where consumers of mobile-based adult content spend an average of $34 per year downloading erotic images and explicit videos.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, French operator Orange said a quarter of all videos accessed over its service, accounting for about 3,300 hours of viewing each month, are adult. In the same article, Vivid Entertainment said its content was downloaded more than 30,000 times in two months by German, Greek and Portuguese cell customers.
U.S. companies have been eager to create similar demand on this side of the Atlantic, but have met with resistance from all the major cell phone companies.
And the Federal Communications Commission, under pressure from groups such as the American Family Association, which called for “heavy fines for pornographers” who offer content over cell phones, has been considering setting up decency standards for mobile content.
In April, the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, hoping to avoid a battle with the FCC over the matter, suggested establishing a ratings system instead.
Still, Jupiter Research forecast revenues from mobile adult content to rise as high as $1.9 billion by 2008, while Strategy Analytics predicted that global spending on adult mobile content could reach $5 billion by 2010.
Similarly, The Yankee Group forecasted that ringtones, which include voice and moan tones, would grow into a billion-dollar market by 2008.
