KANSAS CITY, Mo. - If you thought drivers with cellphones were hazards before ...
The adult entertainment industry, which has netted billions of dollars through Internet pornography and gambling, is about to take on the wireless phone market.
VTX Inc., a Las Vegas company specializing in adult mobile content, is planning to launch a TV-like adult service for wireless phones as early as next week. The company said it initially would broadcast three X-rated channels to Internet-ready wireless phones offering both video and audio.
The service, called XTCMobile, will be broadcast at six or seven frames per second -- faster than a slideshow, but substantially slower than traditional TV broadcasts.
VTX, which has been running its own adult entertainment service for wireless phones for 16 months, is in the process of purchasing XTCMobile from its developer, Mobile Media Systems (MMS), another Nevada-based company.
MMS tested the service at slower speeds in January and February, offering X-rated video to beta testers on the Sprint PCS network.
``Video is one of those elusive creatures -- everyone's been trying to capture her on the wireless Web,'' said Martin Holmes, vice president of business development for VTX. ``When we saw what MMS had to offer, we got pretty excited.''
``We've got plenty of content we could offer,'' Holmes said. ``We just haven't had a viable option.''
Mobile Media is getting out of the X-rated entertainment business with plans to offer more mainstream entertainment, including mobile gambling services. Potentially, the company could allow people to use their cellular phones to place wagers on a horse race and then watch the race on their phones.
Industry analysts said XTCMobile, which will be offered through any U.S. phone company running on next-generation wireless technology and offering phones capable of displaying the service, will be an industry first.
James ``JChris'' Morrison, who describes himself alternatively as CEO or CPO (chief porn officer) of Mobile Media, says the X-rated phone service his company pioneered is more humorous than salacious.
``If you're a red-blooded American guy, you want something cooler than a tiny racecar moving across an animated screen,'' Morrison said.
Although neither Mobile Media or VTX have a contract with Overland Park, Kan.-based Sprint Corp., XTCMobile used the Sprint PCS network for its first tests with consumers before making the service available through other companies.
Sprint has distanced itself from the service.
``It is not affiliated with, endorsed or supported by Sprint,'' said Dan Wilinsky, a Sprint spokesman.
Sprint's open-architecture PCS network, like the Internet, allows companies not affiliated with Sprint to offer services on the company's network.
Although Sprint offers a variety of games, news, information and some video entertainment through Sprint PCS phones, the company has no plan to offer adult-rated entertainment, Wilinsky said.
XTCMobile used the PCS Vision network in January and February to run sexually explicit adult films and some odder offerings -- women in bikinis racing donkeys, for instance.
Holmes said early testing of the service found the initial one frame-per-second offered by XTCMobile wouldn't sell.
``The adult consumer wants their stuff in a way that's valuable enough to pay for,'' he said.
Even at faster speeds, Morrison says the service can't be compared to Internet- or video-based adult fare, mainly because no cellphone has a screen much bigger than 2 1/2 inches square.
``In this instance, size does matter,'' Morrison said. ``Even if I run the frame rate up (from the current 1.5 frames a second), I doubt you will have the same arousal factor'' that comes from seeing adult images on larger screens.
``You get a chuckle out of it,'' he said. ``That's the way it should be.''
But it's no laughing matter to activists such as Patrick Trueman, who was chief of the U.S. Justice Department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section between 1989 and 1992. Trueman is now senior adviser to the Family Research Council, a think tank in Washington.
``Porn is already on cable TV, on the Internet, in mainstream bookstores, on network TV,'' Trueman said. ``It's not a positive sign that it's now going to be available on our cellphones.''
Noting that sexually explicit materials can violate federal obscenity laws, Trueman called on the Justice Department to ``take this on early.''
Officials in the Justice Department office that would handle such cases did not return a phone call.
Michael Craven, vice president for religious and cultural issues for the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families, sees the trend as another technology advance that ``communicates messages that are anything but healthy.''
``Every person in this country should be concerned about the proliferation of pornography that has resulted from advances in technology,'' Craven said. ``Whatever happened to sending a man to the moon? Instead we're pouring intellectual capital into figuring out ways to satisfy our sensate needs.''
The real business value of mobile porn, Morrison said, might be in e-commerce, offering an advertising medium for X-rated material. The service could promote movies, adult novelties or even ``webcam girls,'' and sell those services and goods through wireless phones for delivery to homes or through home computers, he said.
Buoyed by analyst projections that mobile pornography could become a billion-dollar business worldwide, 50 or more companies -- including VTX -- already offer mobile porn services in Europe. Most offer only downloadable photos.
Analysts watching the wireless phone industry expect dozens more to spring up in the United States.
``It is fair to assume that the mobile adult industry will develop and become a very significant mobile genre, and one of the leading services that drives mobile entertainment usage,'' said Paul Skeldon, a senior analyst with Juniper Research, a firm near London.
Skeldon said worldwide mobile porn could grow into a $1.2 billion-a-year industry in 2008. That's not a huge number when compared with the $70 billion that people reportedly spend on porn worldwide.
``Porn on the Internet generates a massive amount of money,'' Skeldon said. ``Many people say you can do the same thing with mobile. I don't think you can.''
Some adult material has been available on wireless phones in the United States since the first phone-based Internet services were launched in the late 1990s. However, that material generally was limited to text-based stories or adult-in-nature drawings.
As phones became more sophisticated, so did adult services -- a trend that mirrors the development of pornography on the Internet.
VTX, for instance, has been selling its PocketJoy service for more than a year. PocketJoy allows people to download X-rated images to their wireless phones.
``Sex drives technology,'' Holmes said. In this case, sex will be a major factor in ``giving people a reason to be out on the wireless Web.''
Low-grade video became possible for wireless phones last year. Sprint became the first U.S. company to offer TV broadcasts through MobiTV, a service offered by Idetic Inc. of Berkeley, Calif. The company offers 14 general-interest channels ranging from ABC News to the Discovery Channel.
Currently, MobiTV offers only about one frame per second, equivalent to a fast slide show. Sprint plans to increase video quality again this year when new phone technology will allow 15 frames per second -- about half the quality of commercial television broadcasts.
The wireless industry in Britain has been struggling with another issue -- keeping wireless porn out of the hands of children. The companies recently agreed to require age verification, but some doubt the code goes far enough.
Skeldon said the code requires a user to send a text message saying he or she is at least age 18 before receiving adult content, a procedure he called inadequate.
``Any 14-year-old with rudimentary math knows how to take his birth date and add four years,'' Skeldon said.
Morrison said XTCMobile had developed technology to verify that subscribers are 18 or older. In addition to requiring a phone call and a credit-card number, the phone-based software that launches the service is protected by a personal identification number.
``We're taking measures to make sure we do the best age verification we can,'' Holmes said. ``We're trying to play by all the rules here. We're trying to be very legitimate in what we do.''
Legitimate adult entertainment companies want to make sure children are protected from adult materials, Morrison said. He concedes that some companies probably won't follow the same rules -- as they don't on the Internet.
Skeldon is concerned that as more visual elements are introduced onto wireless phones, they will become even more distracting.
``When you get more visual things involved while you're driving, there's going to be a lot more accidents,'' he said.
And then there's the social factor of the adult sound business.
In addition to selling song clips to replace traditional ringers, Morrison's firm has been selling ring tones representing bodily noises, as well as ``moantones'' -- a rendition of a woman, or women, in passion. Think a poorly acted version of Meg Ryan's performance in ``When Harry Met Sally.''
Bodily function tones, however, ``outsell all others 18 to 1,'' Morrison said.
``Guys will put it on their phone, leave it next to their buddy, walk away and call their phone,'' Morrison said. ``This isn't about some sexual deviant thing.''
You could almost hear Skeldon shake his head across the phone line when talking about the trend.
``That shows how culturally advanced our countries have become,'' he said.
Actually, X-rated video and photos -- and sounds -- are only the beginning of what the adult industry has planned for wireless phones. Porn could quickly be eclipsed by mobile gambling services.
Morrison said Mobile Media has been talking with the casino industry and is planning to broadcast horse racing, eventually allowing users to call in, place bets and then watch the race.
The service is contingent on using a wireless company's location-based technology to determine whether the person placing the bet is in one of the 40 states which Morrison says allow off-track betting.
Skeldon said people around the world would spend $5 billion to $6 billion a year gambling with mobile phones by 2008.
``The market is potentially very large, extending the traditional bookies' turf and even the already successful online sports betting market across the mobile world,'' Skeldon said.
http://www.mercurynews.com
The adult entertainment industry, which has netted billions of dollars through Internet pornography and gambling, is about to take on the wireless phone market.
VTX Inc., a Las Vegas company specializing in adult mobile content, is planning to launch a TV-like adult service for wireless phones as early as next week. The company said it initially would broadcast three X-rated channels to Internet-ready wireless phones offering both video and audio.
The service, called XTCMobile, will be broadcast at six or seven frames per second -- faster than a slideshow, but substantially slower than traditional TV broadcasts.
VTX, which has been running its own adult entertainment service for wireless phones for 16 months, is in the process of purchasing XTCMobile from its developer, Mobile Media Systems (MMS), another Nevada-based company.
MMS tested the service at slower speeds in January and February, offering X-rated video to beta testers on the Sprint PCS network.
``Video is one of those elusive creatures -- everyone's been trying to capture her on the wireless Web,'' said Martin Holmes, vice president of business development for VTX. ``When we saw what MMS had to offer, we got pretty excited.''
``We've got plenty of content we could offer,'' Holmes said. ``We just haven't had a viable option.''
Mobile Media is getting out of the X-rated entertainment business with plans to offer more mainstream entertainment, including mobile gambling services. Potentially, the company could allow people to use their cellular phones to place wagers on a horse race and then watch the race on their phones.
Industry analysts said XTCMobile, which will be offered through any U.S. phone company running on next-generation wireless technology and offering phones capable of displaying the service, will be an industry first.
James ``JChris'' Morrison, who describes himself alternatively as CEO or CPO (chief porn officer) of Mobile Media, says the X-rated phone service his company pioneered is more humorous than salacious.
``If you're a red-blooded American guy, you want something cooler than a tiny racecar moving across an animated screen,'' Morrison said.
Although neither Mobile Media or VTX have a contract with Overland Park, Kan.-based Sprint Corp., XTCMobile used the Sprint PCS network for its first tests with consumers before making the service available through other companies.
Sprint has distanced itself from the service.
``It is not affiliated with, endorsed or supported by Sprint,'' said Dan Wilinsky, a Sprint spokesman.
Sprint's open-architecture PCS network, like the Internet, allows companies not affiliated with Sprint to offer services on the company's network.
Although Sprint offers a variety of games, news, information and some video entertainment through Sprint PCS phones, the company has no plan to offer adult-rated entertainment, Wilinsky said.
XTCMobile used the PCS Vision network in January and February to run sexually explicit adult films and some odder offerings -- women in bikinis racing donkeys, for instance.
Holmes said early testing of the service found the initial one frame-per-second offered by XTCMobile wouldn't sell.
``The adult consumer wants their stuff in a way that's valuable enough to pay for,'' he said.
Even at faster speeds, Morrison says the service can't be compared to Internet- or video-based adult fare, mainly because no cellphone has a screen much bigger than 2 1/2 inches square.
``In this instance, size does matter,'' Morrison said. ``Even if I run the frame rate up (from the current 1.5 frames a second), I doubt you will have the same arousal factor'' that comes from seeing adult images on larger screens.
``You get a chuckle out of it,'' he said. ``That's the way it should be.''
But it's no laughing matter to activists such as Patrick Trueman, who was chief of the U.S. Justice Department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section between 1989 and 1992. Trueman is now senior adviser to the Family Research Council, a think tank in Washington.
``Porn is already on cable TV, on the Internet, in mainstream bookstores, on network TV,'' Trueman said. ``It's not a positive sign that it's now going to be available on our cellphones.''
Noting that sexually explicit materials can violate federal obscenity laws, Trueman called on the Justice Department to ``take this on early.''
Officials in the Justice Department office that would handle such cases did not return a phone call.
Michael Craven, vice president for religious and cultural issues for the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families, sees the trend as another technology advance that ``communicates messages that are anything but healthy.''
``Every person in this country should be concerned about the proliferation of pornography that has resulted from advances in technology,'' Craven said. ``Whatever happened to sending a man to the moon? Instead we're pouring intellectual capital into figuring out ways to satisfy our sensate needs.''
The real business value of mobile porn, Morrison said, might be in e-commerce, offering an advertising medium for X-rated material. The service could promote movies, adult novelties or even ``webcam girls,'' and sell those services and goods through wireless phones for delivery to homes or through home computers, he said.
Buoyed by analyst projections that mobile pornography could become a billion-dollar business worldwide, 50 or more companies -- including VTX -- already offer mobile porn services in Europe. Most offer only downloadable photos.
Analysts watching the wireless phone industry expect dozens more to spring up in the United States.
``It is fair to assume that the mobile adult industry will develop and become a very significant mobile genre, and one of the leading services that drives mobile entertainment usage,'' said Paul Skeldon, a senior analyst with Juniper Research, a firm near London.
Skeldon said worldwide mobile porn could grow into a $1.2 billion-a-year industry in 2008. That's not a huge number when compared with the $70 billion that people reportedly spend on porn worldwide.
``Porn on the Internet generates a massive amount of money,'' Skeldon said. ``Many people say you can do the same thing with mobile. I don't think you can.''
Some adult material has been available on wireless phones in the United States since the first phone-based Internet services were launched in the late 1990s. However, that material generally was limited to text-based stories or adult-in-nature drawings.
As phones became more sophisticated, so did adult services -- a trend that mirrors the development of pornography on the Internet.
VTX, for instance, has been selling its PocketJoy service for more than a year. PocketJoy allows people to download X-rated images to their wireless phones.
``Sex drives technology,'' Holmes said. In this case, sex will be a major factor in ``giving people a reason to be out on the wireless Web.''
Low-grade video became possible for wireless phones last year. Sprint became the first U.S. company to offer TV broadcasts through MobiTV, a service offered by Idetic Inc. of Berkeley, Calif. The company offers 14 general-interest channels ranging from ABC News to the Discovery Channel.
Currently, MobiTV offers only about one frame per second, equivalent to a fast slide show. Sprint plans to increase video quality again this year when new phone technology will allow 15 frames per second -- about half the quality of commercial television broadcasts.
The wireless industry in Britain has been struggling with another issue -- keeping wireless porn out of the hands of children. The companies recently agreed to require age verification, but some doubt the code goes far enough.
Skeldon said the code requires a user to send a text message saying he or she is at least age 18 before receiving adult content, a procedure he called inadequate.
``Any 14-year-old with rudimentary math knows how to take his birth date and add four years,'' Skeldon said.
Morrison said XTCMobile had developed technology to verify that subscribers are 18 or older. In addition to requiring a phone call and a credit-card number, the phone-based software that launches the service is protected by a personal identification number.
``We're taking measures to make sure we do the best age verification we can,'' Holmes said. ``We're trying to play by all the rules here. We're trying to be very legitimate in what we do.''
Legitimate adult entertainment companies want to make sure children are protected from adult materials, Morrison said. He concedes that some companies probably won't follow the same rules -- as they don't on the Internet.
Skeldon is concerned that as more visual elements are introduced onto wireless phones, they will become even more distracting.
``When you get more visual things involved while you're driving, there's going to be a lot more accidents,'' he said.
And then there's the social factor of the adult sound business.
In addition to selling song clips to replace traditional ringers, Morrison's firm has been selling ring tones representing bodily noises, as well as ``moantones'' -- a rendition of a woman, or women, in passion. Think a poorly acted version of Meg Ryan's performance in ``When Harry Met Sally.''
Bodily function tones, however, ``outsell all others 18 to 1,'' Morrison said.
``Guys will put it on their phone, leave it next to their buddy, walk away and call their phone,'' Morrison said. ``This isn't about some sexual deviant thing.''
You could almost hear Skeldon shake his head across the phone line when talking about the trend.
``That shows how culturally advanced our countries have become,'' he said.
Actually, X-rated video and photos -- and sounds -- are only the beginning of what the adult industry has planned for wireless phones. Porn could quickly be eclipsed by mobile gambling services.
Morrison said Mobile Media has been talking with the casino industry and is planning to broadcast horse racing, eventually allowing users to call in, place bets and then watch the race.
The service is contingent on using a wireless company's location-based technology to determine whether the person placing the bet is in one of the 40 states which Morrison says allow off-track betting.
Skeldon said people around the world would spend $5 billion to $6 billion a year gambling with mobile phones by 2008.
``The market is potentially very large, extending the traditional bookies' turf and even the already successful online sports betting market across the mobile world,'' Skeldon said.
http://www.mercurynews.com
