Ringback Tones Market Challenges (Part I)

After a tremendous success in Asian markets, Ringback Tones are starting to have wide availability in other regions of the world, such as Europe and North America. The ringback tones market is also driven by the disposable incomes rising in China, India and Indonesia. Overall, today, most operators already have a ringback tones service and main mobile industry’s analysts are forecasting that ringback tones global demand will continue to increase in the coming 5 years.

However, Mobile operators, persistently looking for new sources of revenues and ways to increase their subscribers’ loyalty, are constantly launching new services and applications. As a result, in many cases, after launching new applications, operators are finding it challenging to focus on the promotion of the service in the long run. Therefore, operators might face scenarios in which the service reaches stagnation penetration wise but also and especially in terms of usage.

On the same time, with an increasing amount of the Value Added Services (VAS) markets moving off portal, different players in the content value chain (content aggregators, content providers and music labels) have taken over both, the responsibility of marketing services to users and as a consequence, part of the revenues they generate. So far, due to technological constrains, this has not been the case in the ringback tones market.

Taking a look at the ringback tones users, there is relatively low consumer awareness to the ringback tones service, partly because there is no ringback tone generic brand. Many subscribers forget to re-purchase content and need to be constantly reminded about their ringback tones since they never hear it. The more ringback tones will be advertised and its access simplified, the more the number of users registering to the service will grow and the more purchasing ringback tones will become a frequent habit. But operators can’t afford to promote the service on the long run.

Taking a look on its older brother, the ringtone market has had a huge success but so far this success hasn't been leveraged to push the ringback tones service. Unlike the ringtones market, content providers are not “incentivised” to push ringback tones.

Comverse's vision for the future of the ringback tones market is to implement the lesson of the ringtones market success, to promote the ringback tones market. I'm sure you're all curious about what it really means and how it can be done - so tune in next Tuesday for that :)