Ringtones are the thing... or are they?

Well, it's pretty busy as usual at technokitten towers so just to keep my hand in with what's hot in mobile right now, here's some Friday linkage about ringtones 'n stuff.

Tele2 is running a user-generated ringtone competition in Sweden. Unfortunately, I don't speak Swedish so I can't tell you much about it! Perhaps a Swedish speaking reader could shed some light on this for me?

Cellfish.com introduced its Mobile Threat collection of hardcore punk, metal and indie rock ringtones, videos and image downloads for mobile this week. This means that the next time you ride public transport, you just might get an earful of GWAR, Shadows Fall, Everytime I Die, Chimaira and The Devil Wears Prada – consider this your early warning notice. Cellfish Media has partnered with the Sounds of the Underground summer music tour to bring the hard rocking genre of music fans a collection of mobile entertainment to suit their tastes... I think I'll stick to the theme tune from Fame as my ringtone for now ;)

But it seems that mobile games are the new black when it comes to revenue generation rather than ringtones. That comes as no big surprise to me as you can use mp3 files now for ringtones and it's not *that* difficult to make your own from your existing mp3 files.

So it's no surprise that free mobile content seems to be gaining popularity and some serious traction. Zedge.net now has over 5 million subscribers. I'm not sure how many of these are active, or what they're actually doing, nevertheless, it's impressive.

And since April 2006, I'm reliably informed that Cellufun, has delivered close to 4 million downloads to consumers in 160 countries. Cellufun offers free, ad-supported mobile products, predominantly free games ranging from Sudoku to casino to space battles and racing games. You can join the community by going to http://wap.cellufun.com from your web-enabled mobile phone.

And if you're a mobile addict, gaming or otherwise, you can now play with your phone safely in the bath as DoCoMo has just launched a waterproof mobile phone. Actually, joking apart, this would have been handy at Glastonbury this year, I know a few folks whose phones died after getting wet in the rain or being dropped in a puddle or the mud!