Yamaha Targeting European Ringtone Market

Yamaha says that it has selected Netsize to deliver its catalogue of mobile ringtone content (Yamaha Super Ringtones) across 24 operators in seven European countries. Already a major mobile content provider in Japan, with more than 3.4 million subscribers, this is the company's first venture into the growing European ringtone market. Using the Netsize infrastructure, Yamaha hopes to achieve first year sales of over 9 million.

Covering Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands in November, followed by the UK, France, Italy and Spain; Netsize will manage the hosting, delivery and billing of all Yamaha content. The market leader for Premium SMS and mobile business and entertainment solutions will also provide consumer helpdesks with local language support and control digital rights management across the content catalogue. Ringtones will be priced at approximately US$2.20, will be available to suit most popular mobile handset formats (WAP Push compliant) and will be available in a number of ringtone formats, including SMAF and MIDI. All ringtone content will be promoted both offline through local press and online via web and WAP channels.

"This is one of the first major pan-European entries into the European mobile content market by a Japanese company," explains Craig Barrack, UK country manager at Netsize. "Yamaha is already a major supplier of ringtones in Japan and is looking to replicate its success through Netsize's European network."

Posted to the site on 10th November 2003