Info about Ringtones
Ringtones have Become a Lucrative Business
Mobile phones are on almost every single person today. Most people own at least one cell phone while others may have more than that. Cell phones are preferred because they are extremely multifunctional and portable. Selling ringtones has therefore become a very lucrative market.
Harmonium, developed by Vesa-Matti Paananen, was the first company that developed our ringtones. Vesa-Matti Paananen was a computer programmer that came from Finland. The ringtone maker was launched in 1997 and was first used by the giant phone brand Nokia.
Ringtones come in different types. A monophonic ringtone is composed of simple tones, and an ordinary sequence of musical notes. A polyphonic ringtone has a number of notes played at a time. The first of this type of ringtone used sequenced recording. It is more complex than monophonic as there are several notes and sounds involved to create the ringtone. Truetone is common name for superphonic ringtone or audio recording. This can be in an MP3 format or AAC. The first truetone to be distributed in December 2002 was “My Gift to You” a song by Chemistry. Sing tone is a type of ringtone in karaoke style. This is personalized ringtone of which the voice of the mobile user and a favorite track that is combined.
Marketing of ringtones has been widespread. Mobile users definitely love to download different ringtones. In some studies it has been revealed that 23% of cell phone owners actually do. This percentage is even growing and will continue to grow.
In a certain study conducted by Telephia, they have found out that women are the group most fond of downloading the latest ringtone. The women covered 70% for this population of mobile users who download them. And the younger group aging 18-24 are amongst them. Those in the ages 25-34 have also been very high download users.
Consect conducted a study of how much ringtone marketing has been earning. And it was determined that in the year 2004, telecommunication companies who sell personalized ringtones have earned $300 million just that year. Moreover, these handy little tunes have become lucrative for both mobile phone providers and the music industry. The Billboard magazine has launched a hot ringtones chart. Due to a wide and high demand from mobile users worldwide, the sales produced $2 billion of annual income in the year 2005.
The selling of ringtones has been very common. Browsing through the long list of tones would be quite a hassle; mobile users prefer to check online ringtone stores of network providers for the availability of the ringtone they desire but this comes with price tag of $3 at the very least, yet this seems to be fine with users.
Mobile companies have been into this business for the long haul. In fact, there are also monthly subscriptions for a monthly change of ringtone. That is once a mobile user subscribes to the monthly subscription costing $30-$50, the network may send several random ringtones every week.