2006 was the year that ringtones leveled off and ringback tones rose.
According to M:Metrics, while ringtone purchasing leveled off in the US, and actually declined in Europe, ringback tones where ringing up increased sales.
Ringbacks grew in the US at a rate of 225% from the quarter ended January to the quarter ended November.
During the same period, ringback subscriptions also grew across Europe: 150% in Germany and 146% in the UK. Between July and November, ringbacks grew 12.8% in France and 11% in Spain.
"The rise in ringbacks indicates that personalization remains an important motivation for mobile content purchases," said Jen Wu of M:Metrics. "While we see a decrease in ringtone purchases, we do see an increase in user-created ringtones. Since it's impossible to hack a ringback tone, this growing market is not threatened by piracy and end-user savvy."
In fact, the number of users who made their own ringtones in Germany grew from 11.3% in May to 12.3% in November, from 10.2% to 12.6% in France, from 17.1% to 19.1% in the UK, and from 5.1% to 6.6% in the U.S during the same period.
Italian subscribers had the largest percentage of ringtone creators. In August, 19.2% of them created their own ringtone, and that figure grew to 20.4% in November.