Peng Shan, a spirited 21-year-old Beijing design student, changes her
cellphone's ringback tones as often as people change clothes, part of a growing
fad that's delivering piles of cash to China's mobile carriers.
"They reflect my feelings," she said cheerfully in a phone interview. "I
choose a lively pop song when I'm delighted, and a soothing ballad when I'm
frustrated."
Catering to Chinese subscribers' increasing desire for personal expression,
ringback tones -- the sound a caller hears in the seconds they wait for another
person to answer -- are turning a marketing gimmick into big business.
Revenues from ringback tones have given China's mobile carriers, China Mobile
Ltd. and China Unicom Ltd., something to smile about at a time when subscriber
growth has begun decelerating, and when margins are shrinking with the duopoly
seeking poorer customers away from saturated coastal markets.
China Mobile, the world's biggest wireless operator by subscribers, said in
March that "new" businesses, consisting of data and content, grew 59 percent and
accounted for a fifth of revenue in 2005, versus 15.5 percent in 2004.
Within that total, ringback tone revenue was one of the fastest-growing
segments, quadrupling to 3.42 billion yuan ($427 million) in 2005 from just 848
million yuan the previous year.
The company's ringback tone service has become a national hit since its
launch in 2003.
Customers downloaded tones more than 300 million times in 2005. One pop song,
"Who do you love?," was downloaded nearly 16 million times between April and
December.
Unicom has experienced even bigger growth. Ringback tone users skyrocketed to
21.95 million at the end of 2005, compared with a mere 280,000 users at the end
of 2004.
"Ringback tones are more popular in ... China than in Western countries
because, to a certain extent, they ... provide a chance for people to express
their personality freely," said Alina Zhang, an analyst with UOB-Kay Hian in
Shanghai.