The real 3G phone boom: it’s about girls, girls, girls

Suppose you have 15 minutes to while away waiting for the train. Why not pull out your mobile phone, punch in your pin number and download a Playboy movie for as little as £5? Not interested? Of course you’re not; you’re a Spectator reader, for heaven’s sake. But there are plenty of people out there who are, and they’re not only bringing in revenue for the niche market of mobile porn, they’re actually driving the development of mobile technology.

Three years ago, when third-generation mobile phones were first launched in Britain, the joke was that 3G stood for ‘girls, gambling and games’. That has proved substantially correct, though it could equally well be ‘girls, girls, girls’. One specialist research firm, Juniper, estimates that the market for mobile adult entertainment services will be worth more than £700 million this year, reaching £1.7 billion by 2011 — an average annual growth rate of 19 per cent.

Mobile smut is now available on your handset via every UK network, in varying degrees of ease of access. What is your pleasure? For the first-time viewer, there are naughty jokes, downloadable screensavers with ladies wearing not very much, or themed games such as Sexy Snake and an XXX-rated version of Penalty Shoot Out. For the more daring there are video dating and chat services. If you’re really keen — and you’re not worried that your mum might hear your phone ring — you can be alerted to incoming calls by a ‘moan-tone’ from the dream-girl of your choice.

As Bruce Gibson, author of the Juniper report, reminds us, Britain has a distinct advantage in this market because we have a less moralistic, more liberal attitude than the United States. It is accepted here that there is an audience for ‘top-shelf’ products such as soft-porn magazines and DVDs — but there is also a well-established regime to keep adult content out of the hands of those under the legal age.