"I tell you: It's an image thing," says Mitra. "In my two meetings today, when I placed this new phone on the conference table, people think, 'Oh, this guy is connected. This guy knows what's hot.' " He likes jazz -- when the phone rings, a jazzy tune plays.
In a way, programming your cell phone is akin to programming your iPod, laptop or TiVo.
Cell phone ring tones and graphics will ring up nearly $500 million this year.
(Diane Bondareff -- Bloomberg News)
|
|
"The key point here is personalization -- anything you do to that cell phone reflects who you are. It's a statement," says Lewis Ward, senior research analyst in wireless and mobile communications for IDC. In the past three years, cell phone users under 24 years old have been quick in adapting new phone programs, says Ward. "Soon enough, though, everyone else catches on," he adds.
The graphics content on cell phones -- the caller ID graphics, screen savers, etc. -- brought in a little under $150 million this year, he says, and he expects it to grow to more than $1.1 billion by 2008.
The music industry is hanging a lot on the customized cell phone, too. The revenue from ring tones and ringbacks is a "significant addition and a significant replacement for some of the sales we've lost because of declining CD sales and online piracy in the U.S.," says Thomas Hesse, president of global digital business for Sony BMG. "The CD collection you have is always something you showed to friends. The ring tone is a public manifestation of this."
Murray, who works at the Island Shades kiosk at Pentagon City, is a simple kind of guy. Unlike his girlfriend, who paid extra for a camera and special screen savers, he just took the phone that came with his service.
"That ringback thing is a tight idea," he says, though, thinking about his relationship. "So when my phone rings, we can both hear 'My Boo.' "
It's teen love, six weeks strong.
