Sideloading may be strangling the ringtone market, says a new report by Informa.
Research conducted with Orange surveying 1,870 customers in the UK said more than half of mobile users change their ringtones regularly but only 13 per cent pay to do so. This suggests they’re either ripping MP3s from their own music collections and using advanced handsets to re-configure them as tones, swapping them with friends or ‘stealing’ samples from unprotected web sites. Meanwhile six per cent paid for a full track download and three per cent bought a ringback tone.
The study showed that, for all the hype surrounding mobile music, there’s some way to go before adoption is widespread. Although most consumers know handsets can play music, only 27 per cent use them for this purpose. 18 per cent said they had listened to radio while seven per cent created their own ringtone.
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