Porn Straight to Your Handheld

There is a growing trend amongst Japanese men to pull out their cell phones not to call, or text, or even play motion sensor video games, but to browse and download copious amounts of internet porn. Such is the demand for pixelated vagina that Japan’s $74 billion 3G mobile network is folding under the pressure. Traffic is so high during the midnight hour that users have reported massive slowdown and even service stoppages. In response, mobile providers have had to implement restrictions on some of their heaviest users and will have to re-assess the viability of ‘unlimited use’ packages in the new mobile porn age.

Chalk it up to the compulsive demand for pornography, the porn industry has proven to be a highly adaptable business, adept at capitalizing on emerging technologies and distribution methods. The rise of the mobile porn sector continues to prove the industry’s resilience revealing the deeper depths of demand. So lucrative is the mobile market that the Japanese adult video company Soft on Demand has posted 40 percent growth over the course of last year in an area that is still considered relatively untapped: though the 3G network first fired up 8 years ago cell phone technology has only recently begun to meet the demands of transferring, storing, and viewing large video files.

Recent strains on the network will further prove fortuitous forcing future bandwith growth to allow for content to meet an ever increasing demand. With so many cell phones being used to access the web it was only a matter of time before the cell phone became another venue for the consumption of pornography. It is estimated that the larger sites may attract up to 1,000 new customers a day with mobile access driving revenue growth.

As handsets become more sophisticated we can expect the mobile porn industry to expand and eventually solidify a presence in the global market. In fact, estimates show that the global mobile porn industry will double to $4.9 billion by 2013. Japan has become somewhat of a model in this respect having the most technologically advanced cell phone industry (I actually just saw a news segment on a cellphone with a solar panel built into its face plate).

Japan’s 3G mobile network is the longest running, having spurred the evolution and development of mobile technology. As a result, phones come with a plethora of features and have become central in contemporary Japanese life. Such is the omnipresence and importance of the mobile phone in Japan that nearly everyone aged 12 and up will own one. As such it has replaced the computer as the main gateway for personal internet access: about 91 million people will access the net through their mobile phones using laptops and PCs only for work purposes. Further testament to the dominance of cell phone use is the fact that users, especially younger users, may be more proficient typing on a keypad than a keyboard.

As it stands, Japan’s number of mobile internet users triples that of the U.S. But with the advent of the iPhone and other emerging mobile technologies the West may soon follow in the footsteps of their Eastern counterparts where watching pornography on a cell phone will be easy, convenient, and quite literally a handful.