Ringback Tone Market Challenges (Part II)

Last Tuesday I was reviewing the challenges which the ringback tones market has been coping with. If you missed it, here's the link, and in short:

On one hand:

• After a tremendous success in Asian markets, ringback tones are starting to have wide availability in other regions of the world.
• Most operators already offer a ringback tones service.
• Analysts are forecasting ringback tones market growth.

On the other hand:

• Ringback tones subscribers forget to re-purchase content.
• Operators can’t afford to promote the service on the long run.
• Ringtones’ success hasn't been leveraged.
• There is no ringback tones generic brand.
• Content providers are not “incentivised” to push ringback tones.

At Comverse we believe that this can and needs to be changed. Comverse's vision is to open the ringback tones service to the content off-deck market, i.e. content aggregators (like Jamster,Blinko, Moderati etc'), content providers (like MTV, Warner Brothers etc') and music Labels, regardless of platform vendors. The Cross network openness will enable 3rd party retailers and content providers to offer ringback tones content at their portals. The outcome will be users' ability to register and purchase content both from the operator and the content providers own portals.

By doing so, it increases mobile subscribers’ exposure and hence awareness to the ringback tones service and contributes to generate substantial additional revenues for both operators and content B2C players, thanks to more ringback tones users and more ringback tones downloads. In other words, all players need to join hands to promote the ringback tones content.