India Broadband

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Musical ditties that ring along when a mobile phone receives a call are being downloaded worldwide. However Japan accounts for one-third of them.

Delivered by the Internet or text message, they account for 80-95% of a "phone personalization" market that was worth $3.2 billion last year and is said to reach $6.5 billion in 2008, according to London market-research firm Ovum. Looks like ring tones seem to make a bigger business than CD singles.

And the market is even bigger if "caller tones" — in which the caller, not the recipient, hears the tune — are included. Caller tones are already big in Korea, and Ovum predicts they'll be worth an additional $2.8 billion globally in 2008.

With the booming business, there have also been innovations to make it more thriving.

The latest innovation is real tones — genuine song excerpts, not electronic cover versions. First introduced in Japan in 2002 and Europe last year, they are a fast-growing segment of the market. Besides there's the Localizer technology, that helps identify the source of a ringing mobile in a crowded environment.

If a broadband sound (white noise) were to be used as part of the ringing tone, the human brain could quickly and easily locate the direction of the ringing tone, and hence find the phone.

In its attempt to woo mobile users and bring in novelty, ringtones have also taken a predominant place in the mobile arena and are constantly keeping track of the latest technology to deliver the best.