This video presents a fairly compelling case that Apple will be getting into the Ringtone business with the release of the iPhone. Ringtone sales are big business, accounting for 10% of so of the global music market, and well over $1 billion per year in sales (see this old study for 2003-2004 industry numbers).
This news comes as others are talking about the price of the iPhone, which studies are saying is too high for consumers to stomach. My instincts tell me the studies are meaningless, though, and that Apple will sell these things as fast as they can produce them in Taiwan.
Cool
We seem to have reached the same conclusion. But I beat you to it by about 20 hours, hurray!
http://www.nobigidea.com/2007/.....ut-itunes/
Nice! Being on the same thought plane, as the leading tech blog.
actually our phones are made in china by foxconn which is a taiwanese company. the difference is that chinese fingers are cheaper.
Ringtones schmringtones. Why anyone would pay money for one is totally beyond me. (But yes, they do.)
oddly enough, I was talking about the Apple ringtone on my blog the other day
http://kosso.wordpress.com/200.....-ringtone/
if no-name sites could sell ringtones - it’d be a walk in the park for apple; couldn’t be more of a perfect addition
Well so much for all the predictions that “The iPhone will kill the Ringtone Market.”
- or -
“Sideloading” will kill the Ringtone Market.
I wonder if Cingular&Apple will allow for ringtone sales OTA on the cellular networks, since iTunes is WiFi only (no OTA)? I would suspect yes since it’s just a matter of Cingular billing via P-SMS and a delivery sending a link to the purchased content. Assuming Apple has some DRM system for recognizing the ringtone upload, which given this news I suspect they do.
William Volk
CEO, MyNuMo
Ringtones or Scamtones? I have trouble telling the difference in that deception ridden nightmare of an “industry”. That said perhaps Apple, which generally takes a high road to quality, will bring in fair practices. That would be great.
So we get to pay $600 for a phone that plays MP3s but won’t let me use those MP3s as ringtones cause apple wants to make cash selling me their ringtones (which are the ones I don’t want).
Wow. Thanks, one more reason i will never by an iScam… i mean iPhone.
Althoug the narrator said it’s “hard to make out” the button in the lower left-hand corner of the google maps screen, to me it sure looked like a fork and knife - a common icon for showing restaurants on a map. I doubt that’s the input for getting directions. In all likelihood, directions will be handled via parsing text in the top bar, just like on the regular, web-based, google maps.
I hope for their sake that they don’t try to restrict users from setting mp3’s (which they presumably already paid for) as their ringtones.
You can already get the iPhone ringtone from RingtoneSoup at the following url: http://www.ringtonesoup.com/tone/5de68c86
I think that the future of the ringtone market lies in community-generated content, where people opt for more unique and interesting sounds than mass-consumption sound clips. Sites like RingtoneSoup, which apply the YouTube concept to ringtones is where I’d bet we’ll see the more interesting content come up - the type of stuff that Apple would never put in the iTunes music store.
Can’t argue with the “community generated content” approach, since that’s what MyNuMo is all about.
Mobile Wallpapers and Videos as well.
I just think independent artists should be able to make money from their Ringtones, if that’s what they want to do.
William Volk
CEO, MyNuMo
i use http://www.create-ringtone.com to create and send FREE custom ringtones, wallpaper, mp3 and video files to cell phones around the world
yeah, I agree that the iPhone will kill the Ringtone Market
Get iPhone Converter
http://www.iphoneconverter.com/
Good information