Ringtones, wherever you go they are buzzing. Some unique, some popular and some just liked by their owners. Ringtones have come a long way since they first originated. Do you know how it all started? When did the first ringtone came into being? Where did the first ringtone came into being? Let’s go back in time to find when and where was the advent of the first ringtone.

It may seem odd to you but the country in which the first ringtone was sold is Finland. Yes you read it right it was Finland. Finland is much bigger on the world telecom map then on the physical one. At the time when people in the states and world wide were thinking of buying their first cell phone, almost every finish teenager owned one and they were big into sms. The Finns tried to escalate their mobile usage after their foray into the sms and this gave further impetus to the then very much new ringtones market. The first ringtone that ever came into being was Vesa Matti Paananen.

At the same time, on this side of the continent in America the cellular operators were fastening their seat belts for the market share war. During that period the mobile market had captured 20% of the college students and teenagers. A little study found that this age group especially girls loved to talk on phone. One more thing which came into light was that these girl were fashion conscious and loved there phones to be slim and trendy and customized. This was readily done by nokia and it moved a notch up in its market share. Meanwhile in Japan companies started providing theme based ringtones like “Girls just wanna have fun". Thus Japan entered the race in technology and mobile market and its government gave great impetus to mobile and ringtone industry as it earned great amount of royalties from ringtones.

Later in the rock and roll era, Motorola joined hands with MTV to provide wireless ringtone downloads or ringtones embedded in the mobile phone units. These two also provided various other facilities like wallpapers, screen savers etc. Some of the latest surveys in 2005 have showed that the ringtones market has jumped many folds to 11$bn in 2005 fueled by continuous supply of more innovative ringtones.

Now-a-days, there are as many kinds of ringtones as the number of people. The appetite of ringtone industry today has increased tremendously. Now instead of the ready options which are available in the market you can get your own customized ringtones easily at cheap rates or you can simply select your favorite new song as your ringtone. As the passion for music increases this industry will grow many folds. Also the new markets like India and china are giving a huge boost to the ringtones market as their subscriber base is growing at a rate of 20% annually with still 40% of the population in these countries still not using mobiles. There is still a long way to go for the ringtones industry in these new markets as well as in the developed markets. So if you are in the ringtone industry in any way you are at the right place.