Porn is what makes your future...

The dirty secret that drives new technology: it's porn

The mobile communications revolution is being led by the booming sex industry, writes John Arlidge

Sunday March 3, 2002
The Observer

Nick White wants more sex and, unusually for the head of a large London-based mobile-phone firm, is happy to admit it. White knows what turns him on. He wants erotic images and games, he wants sex messages from girlfriends and his virtual mistress, he wants to talk dirty. And he wants it any time, anywhere.

Laura Sigman could have been made for him. Like White, she works in telecoms, thinks about sex all the time and doesn't mind sharing him with other women. She lives in the US, but plans to come to London this year to talk about sex. White wants to meet her.

White is head of VirginXtras, the adult services division of Richard Branson's Virgin mobile phone group, while Sigman works for playboy.com, which sells Playboy merchandise, including Playmate images, online. What unites the two executives is not just sex. They want money, too. Yours and mine. And lots of it.

Last year mobile-phone firms spent billions of pounds on networks that will soon allow us to download still and moving images on to 'third-generation' handsets that are starting to appear in the shops. Now, to recoup their investment, they are resorting to the oldest sales gimmick in the book to flog the new phones - s-e-x.

Like schoolboys nervously eyeing the top shelf in WHSmith, telecoms executives want to grab a share of the 'adult services' market but don't know how. Sex is the fastest-growing area of third-generation mobile telecommunications research and development.

'Suddenly, everyone in mobile communications wants to know what the sex trade - or "adult entertainment" as they call it - can do for them,' says Ben Wood, of Gartner, a Surrey-based IT research and consultancy firm.

That sex sells is scarcely a startling discovery. What is striking, however, is how analysts and executives are acknowledging - for the first time - how important it is when it comes to driving technological advance.

As one senior industry figure put it: 'For years it has been a dirty secret that one of the key drivers of new consumer technology is sex, pornography. The need to make 3G technology work - and work fast - is exposing that secret.'

Analysts estimate that demand for sex services delivered via mobile phones could be worth as much as £1 billion a year in Britain by 2005. Some believe that the future of third-generation mobile communication depends on sex.

Dario Betti, an analyst at London-based digital media consultancy Ovum, says: 'Like it or not, pornography drives each new, convenient visual technology, and 3G, which combines powerful new media applications, will be no different.'

Betti certainly has history on his side. If you are reading this article at home, you may not have any centrefolds stashed under the bed. You may disapprove of porn. But the spin-offs of the industry are all around you.

The camcorder and video machine you use to capture those memorable family moments - baby's first steps, weddings, holidays - use VHS tapes. US pornographers' decision to adopt the cheap convenient VHS - rather than rival Betamax - when the two systems were introduced in the 1970s killed off Betamax while sales of pornographic films drove take-up of video recorders.

Your DVD player may be great for watching out-takes of the Mike Myers' comedy Austin Powers II: The Spy Who Shagged Me, but it is real sex movies which have driven DVD sales because, unlike videotape, users can skip quickly to and from their favourite scenes. The pay-per-view cable or satellite TV movie channel is only available on your TV because pornographers pioneered subscription 'premium' services first in hotels and then on digital networks.

Did you watch the BBC's interactive coverage of Wimbledon on Sky's digital network last summer? Watching four games at once or changing the camera angle so you can watch your favourite player more closely may look new but it isn't. Pornographers perfected the technology a decade ago for an entirely different 'sport'.

And, then, there is the internet. If anyone ever doubted the power of sex to drive technological innovation, the internet proves it, several billion times over - every day. When the web was launched, the most popular word searches were 'sex' and 'porn' and it's still true. Service providers, including Yahoo! and Altavista, have begun excluding sex searches from their net use surveys because they skew the results and make them worthless.

Pornographic sites are also one of the few web services that make money. Forget the great dot.com crash, the Online Computer Library Centre's annual review of net use last year found 80,000 'major' adult websites, which generated profits of more than £1bn - more than any other e-commerce sector. Much of that money has been reinvested in developing leading-edge interactive services including 'virtual reality' sex games that allow users to 'join in' the action.

Porn providers have become so good at developing technology and making money online that mainstream e-businesses from banks to supermarkets are now asking its leading practitioners for advice.

Danni Ashe, an American 'erotic actress' who made millions selling nude pictures of herself on her own website - Danni's Hard Drive - is making a second career as a technological consultant and strategic adviser to large US corporations.

But why porn? What has made a product more associated with men in dirty macs than hi-tech industries one of the most powerful technological forces on the planet? Observers say porn and technology work together so well because each meets the needs of the other. Nerd needs anorak.

Technology is demand-driven. Cutting-edge firms develop products they think will sell fast. Some of the strongest demand comes from porn 'manufacturers' because each hi-tech leap forward helps them get over the one big problem their industry faces - the shame factor.

'Demand for porn is high, but it doesn't travel well,' explains Malcolm Hutty, general director of the Campaign against Censorship of the Internet in Britain. 'People want porn, but they want it in the comfort of their own home, not seedy backstreet cinemas or sex-shops, and they don't want anyone else to know about it. Technology helps bring it straight to you. Each advance seems, at least, to bring you closer to the fantasy, and guarantee more privacy.

'Porn started in cinemas - very public. It then moved into video stores - more discreet. DVDs and digital TV took it direct into the home. And the internet means you can get it any time, anywhere. The more private it becomes, the more comfortable consumers feel, particularly women. They enjoy it more, so they buy it more.'

And now it is coming to mobile phones. It may seem odd that anyone would want to look at porn on a handheld-computer, much less on a mobile phone, but both the sex industry and mobile-phone firms believe that third-generation handsets represent the biggest-ever opportunity to sell sex. As one operator puts it: 'People love mobiles. Almost every adult has one and many will buy the new third-generation sets. People also love the internet.

'3G phones combine the mobile phone and the internet. You're online all the time. It's the net in your pocket. And if you see how many people use the net for sex, you do not have to be a genius to see how they will use their new phones.'

From the earliest photographic equipment to 3G phones, there is scarcely a communications technology which hasn't been seized upon by pornographers and their heavy-breathing customers with equal relish. If the past is anything to go by, the future for mobile-phone firms and the flesh trade is bright. But it's not Orange. It's blue.

What's porn done for us?

You may disapprove of pornography but the spin-offs of the industry are all around.

· Camcorder and VHS video machines were pioneered by porn barons anxious to find a cheap way to mass market blue movies. Take-up of DVD players was driven by pornographers and their customers because the technology enabled users to skip to and from their favourite scenes.

· Pay-per-view cable or satellite TV movies entered the market only after porn firms introduced 'premium' services in hotels and on digital networks. Interactive television, common on digital sport channels, was developed by pornographers to allow users to focus on favourite actors and actresses.

· Internet use and e-business have been driven by smut. There are 80,000 adult websites, which generate annual profits of more than £1 billion - more than any other e-commerce sector.

john.arlidge@observer.co.uk