Hark, Herald Mobiles Sing, Throw That Ringtone In The Bin
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday December 12, 2001
Prepare to be seriously irritated. This month hundreds of thousands of festive ring tones are expected to be downloaded to mobile phones, with Jingle Bells and Silent Night expected to top the charts.
The main culprits are 12- to 25-year-olds, some of whom are said to change their handset's ringtone daily, despite download costs of $1.80 or more.
SMS, the short text messaging service that has become the mobile phone equivalent of email, is also expected to explode in the next few weeks.
Yesterday, BlueSkyFrog launched its SMS alternative to traditional Christmas cards. Customers can buy a pack of 50 or 110 discounted messages to personalise with animated Christmas icons.
BlueSkyFrog spokeswoman Elena Tasquini expects 10,000 to 20,000 extra messages to be sent during the Christmas week.
BlueSkyFrog was one of the pioneers of SMS and ringtones in Australia, and boasts 2 million registered customers 75 per cent of them in the 12-to-25 age group. But in recent months all the major carriers have jumped on the bandwagon.
Optus launched its ringtone downloads in September and said up to 2000 ringtones have been downloaded on peak days.
Optus has also predicted that 6 billion SMS messages could be sent worldwide this Christmas Day and New Year's Day. It says Australians are the second or third biggest users worldwide.
Telstra, which last month lifted SMS prices from 22 to 25, claims its network needs to be upgraded to cope with the unexpected growth.
Since April last year, when it first became possible to send SMS messages to users of other mobile phone networks, Telstra claims SMS volumes have grown by 1000 per cent.
Love in the time of mobiles Page 11
© 2001 Sydney Morning Herald
