History of Ringtones
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. 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. 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. On August 5, 2006, the BBC described "free ringtones" as a dangerous search term, because of the risk of malware and other malicious websites.
By 2005, ring tones generating more than $2 billion in annual worldwide revenues. Real tones, which are often excerpts from pop songs, have become popular as ringtones.

Features
Whereas older telephones simply used a pair of bells for the ringer, modern ring tones have become extremely diverse, leading to phone personalization and customization.
Newer mobile phones allow the users to associate different ring tones for different phone book entries. Taking advantage of these features, a new Ringtone Maker trend has emerged. For example, websites like Mobilephoria, Phonezoo, Phone Sherpa, and Dopetone let users make ringtones from the music they already own (MP3, CD etc.) and upload directly to their mobile phone with no limit on the number of songs uploaded. In addition to the cost benefits, a key feature is the music editor that lets the user easily pick the part of the song they wish to set as a ringtone. Such services automatically detect the phone settings to ensure the best file type and format. There are however providers who have already edited and trimmed the song for you.
Others also allow users to create their own music tones, either with a "melody composer" or a sample/loop arranger (such as the MusicDJ in many Sony Ericsson phones). However, these use native formats only available to one particular phone model or brand. Although other formats, such as MIDI or MP3, are often supported; they must be downloaded to the phone before they can be used as a normal ring tone. Commercial ring tones take advantage of this functionality, which has led to the success of the mobile music industry. Southern rapper Chamillionaire was the first to have a ring tone go 3x platinum for the hit single "Ridin." He now has his own category on certain phones.[citation needed]
The latest innovation is the sing tone, a type of karaoke ring tone where a user’s voice recording is adjusted to be both in time and in tune then mixed with a backing track to make a user-created ring tone.
An alternative to a ring tone for mobile phones is a vibrating alert. It may be useful:
In noisy environments
In places where ring tone noise would be disturbing
For those with a hearing loss

Types of ringtones
Monophonic
A monophonic ringtone is a ringtone that can play only one type of musical tone at a time.
Polyphonic
A polyphonic ringtone is a ringtone that can play several types of tones at a time (up to 72 in recent phones). The first polyphonic ringtones used sequenced recording methods such as MIDI. Such recordings specify what instrument should play a note at a given time, but the actual instrument sound is dependent upon the playback device.
Truetone
A truetone (also known as "realtone", "mastertone", or "superphonic ringtone") is a ringtone which has been encoded with a high fidelity format such MP3, AAC, or WMA format, and represents the latest evolution of the ringtone. Truetones, which are often excerpts from songs, have become popular as rington

Ringtone maker
A ringtone maker allows a user to take a song from their music collection, pick the part that they like and send the file to their mobile phone. Files can be sent to the mobile phone by direct connection (e.g., USB cable), Bluetooth, text messaging, or e-mail, however, most ringtone makers have adopted a "one size fits all" strategy of downloading through the Internet; while appealing to the lowest common denominator, this method usually results in charges to the user for Internet time used on their mobile phones