The ringtone turns 50

March 25, 2006 Quite remarkably, the ringtone officially hits middle age this year, though it lay dormant for more than 40 of those 50 years until Finnish operator Radiolinja launched the first mono-ringtone service in 1998. Since then, it has become one of the star performers of the digital era, and the key driver of the mobile content marketplace , accounting already for more than 10% of global music revenues. It shouldn’t be all that surprising that the ringtone market for mobile phones is so large – thanks to the careful positioning of mobile telephony by the Telcos, the mobile consumer has a distinctly “must pay” mindset compared to the “will never pay” consumer mindset of the internet. On top of that, more than twice as many people have mobile phones (2.2 billion) than connect to the internet (1.1 billion) and in a crowded room, the ringing of your mobile phone puts you firmly on centre stage, so in the fashion conscious youth market, your ringtone is your personal soundtrack – a definitive statement of individualism. Accordingly, a US$20 PC software application which lets consumers create their own ringtones from music without paying any subscription or download fees, will probably do very well.

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