WWW- The increasing popularity of the iPhone has led to a big surge in the number of online searches for pornography sites for Apple’s handset.

According to Google Trends, which measures the number of searches for a particular keyword over time, the incidence of ‘iPhone porn’ searches has risen almost five-fold in the last six months.

And with the arrival of the iPhone 3G next month, complete with its far faster internet connection, analysts expect the number of searches to increase further.

The iPhone offers users the ability to stream high-quality video footage on to a handset boasting a large and high-resolution touchscreen – making it seemingly the ideal place to download video porn.

Speaking as part of a recent Time magazine feature on the subject, Devan Cypher, representative for San Francisco–based Sin City Entertainment, said the iPhone was “by far the porn-friendliest phone”.

Apple has sought to distance itself from the suggestion that it condones such use of its flagship handset and banned porn-related offerings from its official store.

The company also says its second-version of the iPhone will have parental controls on release on July 11, but the porn industry is set to invest heavily in ensuring it makes the most of the new handset.

According to Time, the main players in the industry are all working hard to create sites which work well with the iPhone 3G – from LA-based Vivid to old-school publisher Penthouse.

An estimated 130,000 people are already registered with O2, Apple’s approved iPhone network in the UK, for information about the new handset ahead of its much-anticipated release.