Crisp Wireless, one of the major players in mobile web publishing, released a report that put the words “sex” and “porno” at the top of a list of search terms on mobile web browsers.
The company publishes mobile websites for the likes of Time Warner, Paramount Pictures and USA Today. They looked at the search patterns of more than 14 million mobile web users and found that they were the eighth and ninth most-searched terms during the first quarter of 2008.
But will this increased interest translate to increased profits for adult producers? Online guru Brandon Shalton doubts it. He told XBIZ that the mobile online world currently lacks the infrastructure to handle the users or deliver the kind of high-quality content adult fans want.
“Call me old fashioned, but I just don't see wide use of mobile to look at porn,” said Shalton, who founded the traffic analysis service T3Report.com. "Most people don't have a data plan that gives them that access, there aren't enough channels on cell towers to handle many concurrent users, and many can just watch adult movies at home."
But despite those obstacles, adult production companies continue to offer mobile content, ranging from Digital Playground's iPod-compatible movie trailers to Playboy's iPhone-ready web portal.
Digital Playground founder Joone told XBIZ that despite the growing popularity of mobile adult content, delivering that content has its challenges.
"Every mobile device has its own specs," he said. "And they all want their files in different formats, and when you're trying to process 300 to 400 picture sets, it can get costly."
That said, Joone added that the mobile web is just another platform, and that consumers will find and watch adult movies wherever and whenever they want.
New Sensations President Scott Taylor told XBIZ that his company had found some success working with mobile entertainment company Waat Media in European markets.
"I'd say most definitely there's a future for adult mobile content," Taylor said, though he added that adult companies face less friendly telecommunications companies in America, as opposed to Europe.
The Crisp Wireless report also includes some potentially bad news. Of all mobile web traffic, only 7.5 percent of surfers use search engines to navigate, while 40 percent of mobile surfers have a collection of bookmarks, favorite links and URLs that they type directly into their browsers.
The flip side of that number is that search engine traffic is on the rise. From the fourth quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008, search engine traffic rose from 7.3 to 7.5 percent.
In addition, of the sites in Crisp’s publishing network, traffic saw a 24 percent increase across the board from the end of last year to the beginning of this year.