The first commercial mobile ring tones were created and delivered in Finland in 1998 when a Finnish mobile operator Radiolinja (today Elisa) started their downloadable mobile ring tone service called Harmonium invented by Vesa-Matti Paananen.[1] The Harmonium contained both tools for general public to create monophonic ring tones and a mechanism to deliver them over-the-air (OTA) via SMS to a mobile handset and to bill customer on their phone bill. The service concept spread quickly in Europe and Asia and developed to be a multi billion dollar industry globally.[2] A ring tone service was one of the very first successful m-commerce services and contained also social media aspects like composing, sharing and rating ring tones. The Harmonium also created quickly a need for high quality professional ring tones and commercial ring tone libraries.
The rise of video games has also contributed to the popularity of ring tones.[3] On August 5, 2006, the BBC described "free ringtones" as a dangerous search term, because of the risk of malware and other malicious websites.[4]
By 2005, ring tones generating more than $2 billion in annual worldwide revenues.[5] Real tones, which are often excerpts from pop songs, have become popular as ringtones.