Hip-hop/R&B dominate the sound of Android devices; iPhone users like a little more rock
Click to enlarge. Source: Myxer's Boombox report
Here's an interesting peek into the world of free Web-based mobile phone downloads.
It comes from Myxer, a Florida-based website that claims one of the Internet's largest catalogs of free ringtones, wallpapers, videos, applications and games.
In its inaugural report on the behavior of its 30 million users, Myxer's Boombox Report compares the traffic it's getting from users of Apple's (AAPL) iPhone and Google's (GOOG) Android devices. From 1 billion downloads over the last three months of 2009, Myxer discovered several trends that may be less significant than they appear:
Myxer doesn't offer an explanation for why Android's traffic is so much higher than the iPhone's, but the reasons probably lie in the fact that creating original wallpaper and ringtones is relatively easy on the iPhone. Besides, the Apple's App Store offers many more games and other diversions than Google's.
The bulk of Myxer's traffic, however, comes from neither Android nor iPhone, as the rest of its charts make clear.
Customized cellphone rings are so 2004. But the music industry has a new source of revenue – it's all about the ringback tone.
Remember the ringtone? Just two years ago consumers were spending $1 billion a year on song snippets for their cellphones. Established musical acts recorded ringtone versions of their songs, and some composers set out to write tunes that had hooks and melodies that would lend themselves to tones. MORE
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