But contrary to predictions, Yankee's recent survey states that on a global scale, mobile porn will grow to a $90 million industry by the year 2008, and the U.S. will take the lead in consumer demand.
According to Yankee, mobile porn is expected to be the most profitable mobile service offered on the fixed-line Internet since the mid 1990s.
The study, titled "Child Protection Unlocks Wireless Adult Content Market," is largely aimed at informing mobile carriers that by effectively blocking porn from underage mobile users, the revenue potential from marketing adult porn to wireless users is virtually unlimited and could provide the missing revenue link for WAP or SMS-enabled mobile devices.
One of the factors fueling this growth, Yankee says, is that the billing process is more streamlined and gives users the option of billing porn to their mobile phone bills instead of using credit cards, which is an equal deterrent for adult content providers.
In many cases, the percentage of consumers that chose to charge their phone bill for porn instead of using a credit card was as high as 50 percent.
Yankee states that at the moment "fear is trumping greed" for mobile carriers in terms of legal issues surrounding the trafficking of child porn, pirated music and movies and other forms of illegal content.
Yankee claims that more than half of mobile traffic is related to adult content, and while the demand is clearly in place, billing and security systems are lagging behind.
Leading the mobile porn rally is United Kingdom-based Vodafone, which is one of the few mobile carriers that has so far been able to create a reliable and secure way for users to access porn without endangering minors.
Yankee also claims that PhoneErotica.com, which is controlled by wireless startup PhoneBox Entertainment, receives more than 75 million hits per week from mobile users looking for adult content, and most of the site's visitors only pay airtime because the service is free.
Research by PhoneBox found that only 5 percent of customers were willing to send their credit card numbers over a web-connected phone.
The Yankee report comes on the heels of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association's Wireless I.T. & Entertainment 2004 fall conference in San Francisco this week that features some of the leading middleware vendors in the mobile industry.
