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Some 24.6 million U.S. wireless-phone subscribers?or 13.6% of the base of mobile users?downloaded ring tones in April, according to the latest monthly survey of mobile-phone usage by market-researcher M:Metrics Inc. That's up 6% from the Seattle firm's March survey. At the same time, the survey shows nearly 6 million users, or 3.3% of the subscriber base, downloaded a digital game, a 0.2% increase from March. M:Metrics says ring-tone buyers are increasingly buying multiple downloads, with 60% of buyers saying they bought two or more, and more than a third saying they bought three or more. The market has a pronounced youth bias?some 67% of buyers are under 34?but the researcher says interest in downloading the musical snippets to personalize mobile phones is strong across all age groups. Also, buyers are increasingly dealing with sellers other than the mobile carriers. The survey shows 61% downloaded ring tones from a carrier portal, but 49% said they downloaded from the Web and 5% said they bought the tones via SMS short codes. “Over one-fifth of subscribers who downloaded ring tones said they received at least some of their tones from sources outside the carrier walled garden,” said Mark Donovan, senior analyst and vice president for products at M:Metrics, in a statement. The increase in popularity of such online content as ring tones and games is helping drive a surge in so-called micropayments, or transactions at values under $5. Ring tones, which buyers use to indicate an incoming call on their handsets, sell for anywhere from $1 to $3 each. So-called mastertones, or high-quality recordings of songs, are the most expensive. Some 21% of cell-phone users downloaded these in April, says M:Metrics.
