December 1, 2004
PluggedIn: Mobile Operators Seek Higher Sound Quality
There was a time when a cool ring tone just had to sound musical. Then phones starting ringing to the tune of a pop song, giving way to "ring songs," explains Reuters.
This month, KDDI started selling phones with the ability to download full songs over-the-air and listen to them at a higher quality than ever before.
"This is just the first step," said Tatsuo Yagi, assistant manager at KDDI. "The sound quality is still too inadequate to fully compete with music players." He added that its latest technology can produce the same quality of sound as an iPod, but the phones' amplifiers still have limitations.
NTT DoCoMo which, earlier this month, unveiled a new line of phones, which include compact disk quality "3D sound," is working on a 3D sound technology, which can make mobile phones produce sounds that appear to come from different directions.
In a museum, consumers would get commentaries on their phones as if they were coming from the artifacts themselves, or a business executive could be on a three-way conference call via mobile phone and the other participants' voices would appear to come from two different directions.
Analysts believe that this is a natural evolution for Japanese operators, who see 33 percent to 45 percent of all data usage from ring tones and screensavers.
KDDI alone sees about 10 million downloads per month of "ring songs," or ring tunes with vocal music. Its newest music download feature allows users to cut a segment of a song and designate it as a ring tone.
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