Lord of the rings

An idea that took root in Germany is slowly ringing up business  in Trinidad. By offering ringtones, wallpapers, games and screen savers for mobile phones, mcomm, a new company, is hoping to corner the market Beatrice Schoppmann, mcomm’s managing director, said that she’s hoping to  capitalise on the demand for cell phones in TT to expand her  ringtones business. Accompanied by her assistant, Anthony Pierre, Schoppmann, in a recent interview,  said that while the TT market has yet to be fully opened and explored, there was a lot of positive feedback from her company and its ideas. Perhaps the biggest idea that Schoppmann has hit upon is that of ringtones. A Ringo-card can be bought for $25, which contains three ringtones, all chosen by the customer. These Ringo-cards hold a unique “download code” protected by a scratch field. To request a ringtone, the customer simply uses his cell phone.

He/she sends the request for a ringtone as an SMS (short message) to the company, and gets back his ringtone instantly. The Ringo-card holds a detailed instruction on how to request ringtones ‘over the air’, and for cases where there are difficulties or problems, there is the offer of customer service with extended hours. While a lot of mobile consumers may believe that these ringtones can be downloaded off of the Internet, there are certain myths that still need to be cleared. For instance, many people may not be aware that the Telecommunications Services of TT (TSTT), has banned all downloads since the inception of its GSM network. Whereas before mobile phone users were able to simply copy and paste ringtones and have it sent to their phones, this service is now disabled. Apart from the service now being inaccessible, it was for the most part illegal, as it is done through filesharing, a process that is liable to a criminal offence.

Ringo-card. com, however, offers legitimate ringtones to its customers, as it has already met the approval of the Copyright Organisation of TT (COTT). This means that whichever local artistes comm. decides to use on its ringtones, they have authorised permission by the relevant authorities. As for the ringtones themselves, ringo-card.com offers a wide range of music. In fact, Schoppmann was bold enough to say that Ringo-card “caters for everything and everybody.” This means that both foreign artistes and local artistes can be found in Ringo-card’s wide selection of over 300 ringtones. “Everyone’s taste is different,” she said, when asked who had the edge. Pierre noted though that  soca music was a popular choice among ringo-card customers. Vintage calypso from David Rudder and Lord Kitchener are some of the more requested songs from their customers. The business venture seems to be so promising for Schoppmann, that she has even contracted musicians and sound engineers to produce the ringtones, ‘in-house.”

The company will soon be setting up a website wherby customers will be able to listen to ringtones before actually purchasing them. Even the process of installing the ringtones on one’s phones has become simplified. Representatives of comm. have embarked on a six-month long promotion, where they will visit mobile phone stores and assist customers in putting these ringtones on their phones. While in the US and Europe, the mobile phone market is targetted at those between the ages of five to 24, who would spend approximately US$13.4 billion on mobile content services this year and more than US$20 billion in 2006, Schoppmann said the TT market was geared towards just about everybody.

As for competition, Schopp-mann said that she was not worried. The ringtone business, she said, takes a lot of time and planning, and costs money. She noted that comm. was in talks with other companies to expand the ringtone business. The details of this however, she did not want to divulge. Schoppmann and Pierre said that while their company was a small one, it was looking at setting up  a text system or Ringo-sms. As for the future of ringocard, Mcomm presently only distributes ringtones to monotone phones but with the launch of further services for the GSM network, it is expected that there will be the provision of a more vibrant mobile content service.