What has happened to the simple mobile phone and where does its future lie?
It isn't the call that matters, it's the way in which you receive it that does.
Mobile phone or cell phone culture has become a major influence on today's society. Originally, the value was obvious - the ability to keep in touch with others while away from a land line. But that was before the mobile phone got cool.
Since those days in the 1980's, the mobile phone has developed in ways which would then have been hard to foresee. I remember having a phone in my car as part of my work and if you had asked me what other features it could have had, I would have been stumped. It rang, I could answer it, I could switch it off if the boss or the wife was after me, it could take messages - that was it as far as I was concerned.
Now our culture demands a host of additional cool features to attract them to a particular mobile phone. Not least of these is the ringtone. Having been brought up in the 60's when just to have a landline phone was something, it seems bizarre that anyone should care about the sound a phone makes - it rings after all, doesn't it? I'd reckoned without the individuality of people.
It's ironic that something that was only introduced to catch the eye (or, more precisely, the ear) of potential customers, has now become a culture of its own - witness this website, for example!
It is funny how the mobile phone has been taken to the bosom in this way and why we seek to personalize it to a level far in excess of other objects that we regularly come into contact with.
Given the money now spent in the mobile phone market, there has been a great deal of research carried out on consumer habits. It soon became obvious that ringtone options were a major selling point and this has been used to attract buyers to a particular brand or model which has a wide ringtone range or which is particularly realistic. The market research shows that 70% of purchases are generated by peer pressure - the effect of the mobile phone culture, itself. 90% of mobile phone buyers are fashion conscious and are looking for a model which is 'cool' and in vogue.
There really is no limit to the range of sounds that can be used to make a ringtone with. We shall look at these in our next article on the development of the mobile phone. 
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