A few years back in 2002, John Arlidge from The (UK) Observer wrote about how the consumer electronic companies had the porn industry to thank for them being the first in embrace new ways of making, selling and distributing media into the privacy of users homes.

From the death of Betamax and the triumph of handycam video, the switch to VHS then DVDs in the 80´s and 90´s to the pay-per-view, digital tv popular in the last few years, technology has come a long way baby - thanks to good ol´porn.

The shift has been driven by audiences who don´t want to go out in public, say, to a dodgy movie theatre, but insead want to view porn in the privacy of their home, or on their cellphone with fast access to technology wherever and whenever they want it.

Now that there are faster smartphones available , a boom in downloading porn as short videos to Japanese cellphones for relatively cheapo prices has happened. Some say, because of the unlimited access to the net included in the cellphone plans. But that´s to be expected since Japan is ¨home to the world’s first third-generation wireless network¨, said Bloomberg Press on Monday (6th July 2009).

¨While profiting from the traffic, Tokyo-based mobile carriers DoCoMo and KDDI Corp. say they’ve been forced to impose limits on the heaviest users as the $74 billion network feels the strain.¨ Users have complained of slow access to the web and even complete freezes in services around midnight when everybody tends to log on.

Not that capacity issues haven´t been predicted, ¨it’s an issue that’s been waiting to happen.¨ according to Windsor Holden, principal analyst at Juniper Research Ltd. “It wouldn’t surprise me that it happens in Japan first because they’ve had 3G for so much longer.”

Hirotaka Ishimori, head honcho of the online division of Soft on Demand, a popular Japanese porn company says he sees mobile phone downloads as a huge market since he´s been rolling in it for a while now, what with the monthly 15 million yen sales figures he´s racking up. “Fixed-rate data plans, faster Internet access and sophisticated handsets are contributing to that growth.” he says.

“Whenever there is a new distribution method for adult content, adult content will go that medium,” said Holden. “It’s gone that way since cavemen drew adult pictures in the cave.”

Nice one.
ZiA

For more details see the whole article @ Bloomberg Press

The porn industry as envelope pusher was also echoed by P.W Singer in his book launch we discussed a few blogposts ago.