With recent reports having established it as a $3.5 billion global industry, this value added service amongst the mobile phone sector has surely become a force to reckon with. Mobile phone ring tones – the undisputed leader in the gamut of value added services accounts for roughly a little over 10 per cent of the worldwide music sales, whilst hogging up 70 per cent of the revenue of mobile content downloads.

Mobile phone manufacturers have steadfastly been pushing handsets into the markets that are bundled with technologically advanced features and offer a plethora of user – friendly interface options. And every effort is being made by the manufacturers to ensure that the transmission of these frills and fancies happens effortlessly and as far as possible at no extra cost. Mobile phone ring tone providers have made provisions for the users to actually preview the ring tones before downloading them on to their handsets, whilst certain services provided permit the users to simply specify the name of the song as opposed to having to remember the ring tone code for that particular service provider. In culturally and linguistically diverse countries such as India, United States, and Singapore to name a few, multilingual support for the various modes of interaction has been developed. Not to mention the availability of mobile phone ring tones in various languages.

Mobile phone penetration is driving rapidly into the geographic interiors of every state and in a country like India where a fairly large percentage of the population inhabits the non – metropolis cities, the consumption of mobile phone is only increasing steadily on a yearly basis. It has been estimated that roughly 20 per cent of the mobile users in India can be categorized as early adapters with the category being clearly dominated by the youth. And what kind of youth doesn’t enjoy music in any form? Music, by nature, is fundamental to the existence of mobile phone ring tones and therefore it comes as no surprise to see the market registering a three – digit growth according to latest reports. The burgeoning Bollywood industry and the international artiste’s interest in this industry are only making the momentum of this growth faster. Reports published, reveal the value added services market in India to be pegged at $125 million and the largest chunk of these services is the ring tone segment. Of the telecom revenue pie, close to 80 per cent, according to the findings, can be attributed to ring tone downloads, with mobile phone games making between two to eight per cent.

A country such as a Japan, which has pioneered the concept of Karaoke, has embraced the latest innovation in ring tones being sing tones. Here the user’s voice is recorded on to a popular sound track and then with the help of software it is tuned in to sound appropriate and in sync. Once that is done the sing tone can then be transferred on to a mobile phone handset just like any other ring tone transmitted through a wireless device.

It has also been researched that ring tone consumption is particularly high in the Asian continent with a specific focus on the South - East Asian region. Owing to the fact that a cluster of non – English speaking countries makes up this region, the local artistes enjoy the maximum popularity here. The ring tone compositions of their famous soundtracks are widely consumed by those living within the country itself and to a certain extent downloads do happen amongst the widespread Diaspora across the globe.

With video ring tones being lapped up quickly by consumers across the globe avidly, it is estimated that each of these big markets in the Asian continent will see a million video ring tones enabled handsets being dumped in, in the forthcoming year.