Hot, Sexy Wireless

Is your cell phone experience incomplete? Have you been longing to play strip poker on your wireless handset? If so, has Playboy (NYSE: PLA  ) got a naughty ring tone or two for you. The adult entertainment specialist will be teaming up with obscure DwangoWireless (OTC BB: DWGN) to deliver racy games, randy clips, and more virtual ribaldry through your mobile phone.

Wireless content hasn't exactly taken this country by storm. While you will occasionally find someone getting trigger-happy with their picture phone or going through the weekly ritual of text messaging votes in to American Idol, most people seem more than happy to stick to using their cell phones almost exclusively as two-way communication devices.

It's not that way overseas, where companies like SINA (Nasdaq: SINA  ) and SOHU (Nasdaq: SOHU  ) became hot stocks two years ago on the strength of serving China's wireless content-hungry market. Playboy is already a player in wireless services internationally.

Will America follow Asia and Europe into paying up for wireless entertainment? Playboy has a hot snapshot of Miss December that says you will.

It's not just Playboy, of course. Earlier this week Disney (NYSE: DIS  ) announced that it would be hooking up with Sprint (NYSE: FON  ) to launch ESPN Mobile, the first of many premium wireless content services that Disney will be introducing stateside next year.

InfoSpace (Nasdaq: INSP  ) is acquiring wireless gaming upstart IOMO in the hopes of buffing up its own value-added mobile offerings. So while cell phones and wireless gaming devices that have tried to market themselves as premium entertainment platforms have done a pretty poor job of winning over the consumer, it's time for them to step aside and let the content companies give it a shot.

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz can't see himself paying for wireless content -- though he's often proven himself wrong. He does own shares in Disney but not in any other company mentioned in this story. He is a member of the Rule Breakers analytical team, seeking out tomorrow's great growth stocks today.