Ovum, the London-based high-tech consultancy based, predicts the global mobile entertainment market will be worth $3 billion by 2005. The CTIA says that by 2006, US consumers will spend in excess of $13 billion on mobile devices and $8 billion on wireless games. Other consultancy firms such as the Yankee Group, poo poo such wildly optimistic predictions, citing a survey conducted last month in which 82 percent of US cellular subscribers said that the did not want or need mobile Internet connectivity and that current services were too expensive and too complicated to use.

So while some US consumers might find mobile e-mail and text messaging a bit of a yawn, the industry hopes that they will be turned on by downloading ringtones. European and Japanese users spent $1.3 billion on ringtones last year, accounting for a decent chunk of the music industry's total revenue of $33 billion, senior EMI vice president Jay Samit told CTIA attendees last month.

These ring tones will become the gateway drug to wireless music and entertainment services, and the music industry hopes the public, once hooked, will keep coming back for more. It's not just another whistle or bell, they believe, it is the on switch for a money machine. However, those who have watched a similar situation develop with the Web will realize it takes a great deal longer for content to become king than even Bill Gates predicted. Although he made his famous content is king speech back in 1996, only now is paid Web content taking off in large numbers.

That said, who would have thought ten years ago that these little jingles would become a billion-dollar business? Companies like Faith West and Moviso have built sizable businesses around providing ringtones, animations, games and content services in Europe and Asia, but a problem is that current wireless infrastructure is not good enough to enable users download the original sound files.

So technology vendors are coming up with innovative ways to circumnavigate this problem by providing sound reproduction software. Beatnik, a digital music software vendor founded by former pop star Thomas Dolby, has a novel way of recreating the music.

Rather than sending an audio file, what you actually send is what is akin to the sheet music, says Jeremy Copp Senior Vice President, Sales & Marketing of Beatnik. Software on the device then recreates the music. Of course, other elements, such as the voice of Britney Spears, have to be sent separately.

If one looks at the progression of technical gadgets over the last decade, we can certainly see how devices such as laptop computers, PDAs, and cell phones have become fashion statements and status symbols. It's a bit like the way wristwatches and sunglasses were status symbols for the previous generation. But now the landscape is changing again, because the data that we store on them becomes a statement in itself.

When you consume music on the TV or the radio, you consume it for yourself, says Tapio Anttila, mobile entertainment analyst with Brauning, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based research consultancy. When you consume mobile entertainment such as ring tones, you consume it for those around you.

Apart from demonstrating your uniqueness, customizing your ringtone can have practical advantages too. It can prevent the other 100 people in the room from reaching for their phones every time one rings. Furthermore, most phones allow you to customize the ringtone for each entry in your address book so you know who is calling. Childish, perhaps but nonetheless useful.