The very first commercial mobile ring tones were created and delivered in Finland in 1998 when a Finnish mobile operator Radiolinja (today named Elisa) started a service named Harmonium which made it posible to download mobile ring tones.
The Harmonium service, which was invented by Vesa-Matti Pananen, contained both tools for individuals to create monophonic ring tones and a mechanism to deliver them over-the-air (OTA) via SMS to mobile handsets. The service concept spread very quickly in Europe and Asia and developed into a multi-billion dollar industry.
The ring tone service was one of the very first successful m-commerce services, with social media features like composing, sharing, and rating ring tones. The Harmonium also quickly created a market for high-quality professional ring tones and commercial ring tone libraries.
The rise of video games has also contributed to the popularity of ring tones. On August 5, 2006, the BBC described "free ring tones" as a dangerous search term, because of the risk of malware and other malicious websites.
By 2005, ring tones generated more than $2 billion in annual worldwide revenues. Real tones, which are often excerpts from pop songs, have become popular as ring tones.
iPhone ringtones from
$23.76 per year
iPhone ringtones from $1.98
per month
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