Move over ring tones, video tones are here!
Though they control just over three per cent of the total ring tone market of Rs 130 crore (Rs 1.3 billion) in India, those in the industry say, video tones are bound to capture over 30 per cent of the segment within next one year.
Video tones is six-month old in India, has picked up only 3 to 4 per cent of the market share. It is only available on high-end sets. However, by next year, it is expected to control 25 to 30 per cent of the market, says Rajiv Hiranandani of mobile2win, a mobile content maker.
Many handset manufacturers and service providers have already latched on to the idea. The response of the consumers suggests they are going to be the new big trend in coming days, says Hiranandani.
The Video Ringtones is a brief video sequences from music videos or animation clips to announce the incoming calls, when a user receives an incoming call, the user will see a video clip on his screen announcing the call along with amazing sounds.
"Video Ringtone is right now a premium niche product aimed at early adopters. But over the next four years, close to 60 per cent of the new 100 million handsets that get added in india will be high end and support video ringtones," says Arun Gupta of 'Mauj', another mobile content maker.
"Most of the video tones are based on Bollywood films or Disney cartoons but the mobile market in India is growing so fast that content is specially being created for cellphones," says C B Arun Kumar, who has made India's first Indian animated video-tone character, Lady Chatterjee.
Lady Chatterjee made her tiny screen debut earlier this month. The item girl sings in Bengali, spots a big red bindi, red and white bangles and wears low-slung jeans. She can be downloaded on the GPRS mobile from the net, says Kumar, who had produced the first Indian animation series Jungle Tales.
"Besides bollywood music videos, other popular and emerging categories are international pop, Bollywood mimicry, cartoons, emoticons, fashion and 3D.
Surprisingly the most popular have been original animations with original non-film based music," says Gupta.
There is lot of scope for Indian mobile content providers to make video tones for foreign markets, says Hiranandani, adding, "We are in talks with international music companies to make repertoires and other video downloads for American and British markets."
Indian companies are getting lot of traction from international operators as well as aggregators in eastern Europe, US, Latin America and South Africa, says Gupta.
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