Mobile Word Solutions

The Virgin Mobile USA is doing some exciting things with mobile music and content merchandising. We're excited they selected our platform to enable those activities. Unifying different content types under a single storefront provides a compelling consumer experience, the type of experience demanded by Virgin Mobile USA's customers," said Dr. Ronjon Nag, Cellmania's CEO.

Mobile content via SMS is still the main technology used to send mobile consumers messages, especially simple content such as ringtones and wallpapers. Because SMS is the main messaging technology used by young people, it is still the most effective way of reaching this target market. SMS is also ubiquitous, reaching a wider audience than any other technology available in the mobile space (MMS, bluetooth, mobile e-mail or WAP). More important than anything else, SMS is extremely easy to use, what makes adoption increase day by day.

Although many say that SMS is an old technology that sooner or later will be replaced by fancier like MMS or WAP, the fact is that SMS reinvents itself continuously. One example is the introduction of applications where mobile tickets are sent to consumers via SMS, which contains a WAP-Push that contains a link where a barcode is placed. This clearly substitutes MMS, which has a limited reach and still suffers from interoperability problems.

Music

Mobile music any audio file that is played on a mobile phone. Mobile music is normally formatted as an AAC file or an and comes in several different formats. Monophonic ringtones were the earliest form of ringtone, and played one tone at a time. This was improved upon with polyphonic ringtones, which played several tones at the same time so a more convincing melody could be created. The next step was to play clips of actual songs, which were dubbed Realtones. These are preferred by record labels as this evolution of the ringtone has allowed them to gain a cut of lucurative ringtone market. In short Realtones generate royalties for record labels (the master recording owners) as well as publishers (the writers), however, when Monophonic or Polyphonic ringtones are sold only publishing or "mechanical" royalties are incurred as no master recording has been exploited. Some companies promote covertones, which are ringtones that are recorded by cover bands to sound like a famous song. Recently Ringback tones have become available, which are played to the person calling the owner of the ringback tone. Voicetones are ringtones that play someone talking or shouting rather than music, and there are various of ringtones of natural and everyday sounds. Realtones are the most popular form of ringtones. As an example, they captures 76.4% of the US ringtone market in the second quarter of 2006, followed by monophonic and polyphonic ringtones at 12% and ringback tones and 11.5% – but monophonic and polyphonic ringtones are falling in popularity while ringback tones are growing. This trend is common around the globe. A recent innovation is the whereby "the user’s voice is recorded singing to a popular music track and then “tuned-up” automatically to sound good. This can then be downloaded as a ringtone or sent to another user’s mobile phone" said the director of Synchro Arts, the developers.