Porn for Pods

It's been said that pornography is often the catalyst for new media technology adoption. That tradition seems to be holding fast with the recent debut of video iPods. Producers of adult material are seeking out -- and finding -- an audience among video iPod owners.

As of Oct. 31, Video iPod users have downloaded one million clips from iTunes, at an average cost of $1.99 per clip, since the video iPod debuted on Oct. 12. The most popular selections are music videos, TV episodes, and short films.

This interest has not been lost on the adult entertainment industry, as the biggest names in adult video, including Playboy and Penthouse, have either launched or are preparing to launch video services in the video iPod format. From a purely financial perspective, the move would appear to be quite lucrative. In Europe, porn for cell phones is a $400 million-a-year business, and is expected to reach $5 billion by 2010. Meanwhile, the adult site Suicide Girls claims to have served up 500,000 free video clip downloads in the first week they were made available.

"The entire entertainment business is changing to portable devices," says Steven Hirsch, co-founder of Vivid Entertainment Group, one of the largest adult movie studios. "I think that the dollars are going to shift with it."

Source: Forbes