Motorola to offer ring tones for wireless phones

CHICAGO: Motorola Inc., the world's No. 2 maker of wireless telephones, said

on Tuesday that it has signed an agreement with Ztango Inc., a wireless

entertainment applications provider, to allow consumers to personalize their

Motorola phones with ring tones, screen savers, and graphics.

Telecom Italia Group is the first to launch the new service and is making

downloadable ring tones, including a variety of pop, rock, dance, classical,

television, or movie melodies, available to customers in Italy, the companies

said in a statement.

Consumers can download the new tunes from Telecom Italia's Web site and via a

wireless application protocol (WAP) mobile phone with the Internet browser

within the phone or by having one of the ring tones sent directly to a Motorola

phone via short message service (SMS).

"Motorola is investing heavily in ways in which consumers can

personalize and enhance their experiences with a wireless phone as well as its

creative service platforms," Motorola vice president Joe Coletta said in a

statement.

"Motorola believes downloadable content will provide network operators

with a unique way to differentiate their services while creating additional

revenue streams," he added.

Jane Zweig, chief executive of Washington-area wireless consulting firm The

Shosteck Group, said Finland's Nokia, the world's No. 1 wireless phone maker,

has been offering personalized ring tones with great success for years.

"This is not a eureka announcement," she said. "It's something

Motorola needed to do." Motorola, based in the Chicago suburb of

Schaumburg, Illinois, already allowed consumers to personalize their two-way

pager tones.

Motorola and Ztango, which is based in Reston, Virginia, will provide both

audio and graphic downloads to existing and future Motorola mobile devices

across the spectrum of wireless protocols. The companies expect to begin

offering advanced enhanced messaging service (EMS) content, like screen savers

or wallpaper, by year end.

As part of the agreement, Ztango will provide technical development and

marketing expertise for the implementation of advanced wireless content

compatible with Motorola's efforts in SMS, EMS, and multimedia services (MMS).

EMS represents the evolution of SMS, the companies said. Many consumers use

SMS today to send simple 150 character, text-based messages via a wireless

phone. A skyrocketing number of consumers are driving the text-messaging trend

with more than 20 billion SMS text messages sent each month worldwide.

(C) Reuters Limited.