October 18, 2004
Replacing that 'brrring' with cash-earning tunes
The IHT has a good article on ring back tones.
"The ringback service has had some success in Europe. Vodafone Italy signed up 570,000 clients in the first two months. T-Mobile had a total of 500,000 subscribers for the service in Germany, Britain and the Czech Republic at the end of June. It is an idea that is still new to the United States.
Ovum, the technology consultancy based in London, predicts that the market for ring-back tones in Western Europe will be $16 million this year and will expand to $721 million in 2008, when the worldwide market for the service will be worth $2.4 billion.
In most cases, customers pay a monthly fee for the service, usually about euro 1, or $1.24, and then euro 1 to euro 3 per song. Subscribers can have many songs active at the same time and can designate a particular song for a specific person. Most operators are targeting clients under the age of 25, but analysts expect ring-back tones will also be popular with business users who could use them for sales and marketing messages."
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