What is driving the growth of ring tones in an emerging market like India?

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<h1>What is driving the growth of ring tones in an emerging market like India?</h1><strong> Author: <a href='http://www.articleseen.com/profile_Steve Adams.aspx'>Steve Adams</a></strong><br /><p>A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) study stated growth in VAS has been made possible by the following factors: 3 Improving quality of handsets 4 Reducing prices of handsets 5 Enhanced features like greater memory of handsets 6 Lowering age profile of celllphone owners and their willingness to spend 7 Innovation in content and packaging. Countries like India have a huge potential in VAS as the mobile penetration remains still comparatively low, the report noted. The firm pointed out that by 2011 worldwide mobile gaming end user revenue is slated to grow to $9.6 billion. It added that expenditure on music received and played on mobile handsets is likely to grow from $13.7 billion in 2007 to $32.2 billion by 2010. Interestingly, in countries like India with a vast customer base, spirituality and religion are two major components of ring tone market. An article analyzing the trend in India’s leading business daily Economic Times noted: “When his friends discouraged Alexander Graham Bell from working on the idea of a telephone, it was his faith in God that probably kept his spirit to discover alive. Who would have thought that the instrument would be used to be closer to God?” In an age when everything is only an SMS away, a user simply needs to press a few buttons on the mobile device to have a spiritual or religious experience. Services like chanting, mantra, hymns from service providers have opened up a new revenue stream for them. This is proving to be a highly successful mode of business for carriers. As the article rightly pointed out Indians harbor a strong affinity for Bollywood (Hindi films) and devotional music. They love the experience of tuning to it ‘on-the-go’ thanks to voice services. No surprise, there is a growing demand for such ring tones, caller tunes and other voice services. The mobile VAS market currently includes close to 25 per cent of the total music business in the country. This, in turn, is dominated by spiritual and religious music categories. Even figures are a testimony to the fact that mobile music downloads, consisting of mainly Bollywood, spiritual and regional genres, is growing at a fast clip. The devotional music category constitutes close to 15-20 per cent of the total download market. The mobile music downloads are expected to cause a substantial growth in India’s mobile music market, making it worth $800 million by 2009, up from mere $100 million in 2005. The growth can be related to the affinity for religious and spiritual music downloads. Several innovations have been taking place in this segment over last couple of years. Carriers are trying to fulfill the spiritual urge of users by offering audio services like popular spiritual songs, rituals and aartis (holy songs) live from temples. People can even seek blessings through their cellphone at a nominal cost. Users can also set their favorite shlokas (holy sermons) as their background music, ring tones or alarms. </p><strong>About the Author:</strong><br />To find out more and download <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.agorics.com/">free ringtones</a> please go to <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.agorics.com/free_ringtones_verizon/">free ringtones</a> for verizon and <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.agorics.com/free_ringtones_sprint/">free ringtones</a> for sprint.<p> Article Source: <a href='http://www.articleseen.com/Article_What-is-driving-the-growth-of-ring-tones-in-an-emerging-market-like-India_832.aspx'> http://www.articleseen.com/Article_What is driving the growth of ring tones in an emerging market like India?_832.aspx</a></p>

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Category : Communications : Mobile Phones