YNOT EUROPE – The number of consumers using smartphones is on the increase in both Nigeria and South Africa, according to mobile adult affiliate program MobGlam, a division of Barcelona-based Spankmo Mobile Services. In part, the growth may be attributed to an increase in availability of both the BlackBerry Messenger service and phones that use the Android operating system. Concurrently, manufacturers of both kinds of devices have upped their product promotion in both countries.

Coupled with the comparatively poor quality of fixed-line internet service in some areas of Africa, the news about smartphones may be a very good thing for adult-content marketers, a MobGlam spokesperson said. The company recently added both countries to its SMS mobile billing system, enabling direct-from-the-phone micropayments in order to serve the majority of consumers in the region, who use prepaid cellular plans.

“In Nigeria, we sell subscriptions just for one hour’s access, and in South Africa, for just one day,” said Spankmo Chief Executive Officer Graeme Kingshott. “With our 365-day cookie policy, returning surfers with a cookie present in their browser will mean you get credit for every time they re-join.”

MobGlam, which launched in September, covers 16 mobile sites in niches including amateur, softcore, porn stars, gay, fetish and tranny. All run on Spankmo’s mobile platform and offer surfers subscriptions for unlimited video streaming. The program pays a 50-percent recurring revenue share.

Worldwide, MobGlam offers consumers a variety of payment options including credit cards, debit cards and uKash. Most sites are supported in 11 languages — English, Spanish, Czech, German, Russian, Italian, French, Romanian, Portuguese, Dutch and Polish — and all are formatted to look nice and run well on iPads in addition to most phones.