Ringtone trends for 2008

Globally, people are increasingly becoming aware of the plight of the environment. This redhot green consciousness has spilled over into the mobile ringtone market. Last month, the American-based Centre for Biological Diversity - which offers free endangered species ringtones - celebrated the 100,000th download from its endangered species ringtone website, rareearthtones.org

Although it melts our hearts that so many phones out there growl like a polar bear or howl like an endangered Mexican gray wolf, and although we also think that it is an ingenious tactic to promote awareness and shine the spotlight on the extinction crisis facing so many animal and bird species, we can’t help but think that the Centre may have missed out on a great opportunity. Instead of offering the ringtones for download for free, perhaps they should have asked for a small donation towards helping these animals?

After all, if people are willing to shell out for a ringtone of King Juan Carlos of Spain asking Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez “Why don’t you shut up?” (or rather “Por qué no te callas!”) – scoring 500,000 downloads in its first week - we are sure they would have been willing to pay to have their phone emiting the soothing sounds of an endangered species.

At least all of these above trends and statistics demonstrate that the mobile phone ringtone as we know, love (or ocassionally loathe) and download it, needn’t be placed on the list of endangered techno trends just yet.