News
Ringtone becomes flingtone
Tim Green Jan 4 2007, 12:30pm
A new 'pushable' ringtone, from start-up Emotive, could herald next phase of the $5 billion ringtone market.
The tone – nicknamed a flingtone – will be demonstrated in prototype form at 3GSM next month. A version of the product, called Ringjacker, has just been released for VoIP as part of the new Skype 3.0 software.
Ringjacker is being launched by Emotive Communications, a start-up headed by Anthony Stonefield, who founded the US ringtone pioneer Moviso in 1993. Emotive is using the VoIP launch to hone its business model and refine the product in advance of a live launch on Symbian and Windows by May 2007.
The user needs to download a client for a pushable tone to work. Emotive envisages a ringback style model with consumers paying a small monthly fee for access to a catalogue of tones, voicetones, video clips and sound effects they can send or receive. The company has launched on Skype with free promotional material.
But it plans to add major label product soon.
Stonefield is excited about the product because it blends a new form of self-expression with viral marketing possibilities. He said: “I see this as a ‘killer app’ for 3 and 4G. Push ringers offer a vastly more expressive and compelling form of personalisation than today’s ringtones. We will enable the called party to purchase a copy of the incoming ringtone or the whole song, thus opening up P2P marketing possibilities and super-distribution. "
To this end Emotive will create an incentive programme, using Sennari Entertainment’s bling system, that rewards callers for purchases made by their called parties. It’s also exploring a range of advertising based models.
