Quality, Not Quantity
While carriers and record labels celebrate the growth in ringtone downloads, some publishers believe that ringtone and mobile music sales could benefit from more marketing. According to Matt Feldman, president and CEO of mobile content firm Versaly, record labels could do much more to promote and market their music through the mobile phone. "I don't see the promotion and marketing side of the music industry grasping this," Feldman says.

For example, he says that record labels could help generate excitement about a new album by developing ringtones and releasing them before the album goes on sale. He also believes that carriers could increase ringtone promotions. "In Europe, newspapers have ringtone advertising, but here it is nonexistent. If you're not cell phone savvy, you won't search for these products," Feldman says.

Although the majority of users purchase ringtones through their mobile handsets, some companies draw customers through ringtone cards, which can be purchased at various retailers. Although the carriers sanction these cards, the operator typically only receives the airtime revenue from the ringtone download and not the revenue from the ringtone purchase itself. Operators say the goal is to make it simple for the customer to purchase a ringtone. "If customers take different avenues to purchase a ringtone, we are open to that," Brueggemann says.

InfoSpace's Stonefield believes the cards help build consumer awareness and are helpful especially when sold with a handset. "In many cases our biggest customers are the handset makers that sell these cards with their handsets," Stonefield says.

Although operators tout broad ringtone portfolios that cover all genres of music, many experts say ringtone volume isn't that important. "We find that more than 80 percent of sales volume is around 150 to 200 titles," Stonefield says. "It's more about quality, not quantity. I wouldn't be duped into thinking that a large catalog means more sales."

As carriers add more sophisticated ringtones with video capabilities and graphics to their portfolios, some believe that the old-fashioned monophonic tones of the past will become extinct. "I think monophonic may go away" as people replace their handsets, Stonefield says.
But operators aren't so quick to dismiss the ringers of the past.

For Cingular, which still has many customers using older TDMA handsets on its TDMA network, the monophonic ringers are important. "We must make sure we can support all handset technology that is out there," Brueggemann says. And Sprint's Hallock agrees. "We have to provide customers with a choice. Some want to hear actual music. And others want their phone to sound like a phone."