June 18, 2009
Ringtone sales fall blamed on music downloads
Sales of mobile phone ringtones have collapsed in Australia over the past two years according to a new report from business consultants. News.com.au reports.
According to the latest IBISWorld report, ringtone sales fell by 17.3 per cent in 2008, up from 3 per cent in 2007.
Senior analyst Edward Butler said the poor performance of ringtone sales was likely due to increased sales of digital music.
"The biggest driver is that now people have the capacity to download songs on their phone," he said.
"With the release of the iPhone and things like BigPond having whole libraries of songs that you can download and the capacity to manipulate those songs and turn them into ringtones, there’s much less motivation to download a thirty second grab of the song."
Mr Butler also believes there has been a backlash against ringtone providers.
Sites like iTunes, Bigpond and Amazon that have downloads of MP3s available are seen as more reputable and safer."
Sales of mobile master ringtones hit a high in 2006, with 10 million ringtones sold – up from 3.7 million in 2005.
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