As I’ve previously mentioned on this blog: porn is heading for your cell phone. A little while ago I linked to a post on [MobHappy] where a trend was mentioned that emerged in Bengbu, China. Some vendors there are using free pornographic video clips to entice people to buy phones, using them to demonstrate the video playback capabilities of devices, then loading them on the phone after purchase. Now [Textually] reports that major American cellular carriers who have so far been adamant in their refusal to sell pornography from the same content menus on which they sell ring tones and video games are showing signs that they may soften their stance. I’m not saying that’s a useful thing, I’m just pointing to the predictions that the market value of this trend is estimated to reach (US only) $ 196 million by 2009. And for some marketeers, that’s very good news. [also featured on The Wireless Weblog]
If you were wondering whether or not people are really serious about this, let me inform you about the following : “Penthouse Media Group has locked down $48 million in private financing to pay for an expansion into TV and wireless delivery.”
Sex sells, that’s no big news. What’s interesting to follow, however, is the fact everybody in sexland is getting ready to become part of a new and wireless market. I’m not saying it’s going to be ‘all over us’, but I’m pretty sure there’s a huge potential audience for these things, just as there is for mobile gambling. I’m not pro and not against it, but this is the world we live in.
In the light of these recent developments I’d like to introduce a not so regular phone that has been on the market for a while already, but now offers some other perspectives. Meet the Nokia 6680, a 133 g weighing 108.6 x 55.2 x 20.5 mm, 104 cc sized omni-phone that has a lot of funky features.
Let’s start with the camera and multimedia specs of this 240-hour-uptimer :
1.3 MP
1280×960 pixels
video (QCIF)
flash
Secondary video call VGA camera
Bluetooth
Push to talk
EDGE
Java MIDP 2.0
MP3/AAC/MPEG4 player -
HTML browser with .pdf support
xHTML browser
WAP 2.0
T9
Organiser
Voice command/memo
Pop-Port with USB
Built-in handsfree
Other cool stuff : SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging over a 384 kbps (WCDMA) data speed line. A Symbian OS 8.0a , Series 60 UI keeps this gadget going and the 256K-color TFT has a 176 x 208 pixels dimension. – More info in the [GSMArena]
Get ready to start streaming and have some video conferencing (what we call webcam in the internet world, no?) – Hat tip for the phone : [Liones, the female night elf]