A ringtone or ring tone is the sound made by a mobile phone to indicate an incoming call or text message. The term is a misnomer, as it is often used to refer to any ring sound, almost all of which are not tones. The term is most often used to refer to the customizable sounds used on mobile phones.

A phone “rings” when its network indicates an incoming call and the phone thus alerts the user. For landline telephones, the call signal can be an electric current generated by the switch to which the telephone is connected. For mobile phones, the network sends the phone a message indicating an incoming call.

A telephone “ring” is the sound generated when there is an incoming telephone call. The term originated from the fact that early telephones had a ringing mechanism consisting of a bell and an electromagnetically-driven hammer, producing a ringing sound. The aforementioned electrical signal powered the electromagnet which would rapidly move and release the hammer, striking the bell. This "magneto" bell system is still in widespread use. The ringing signal sent to a customer's telephone is AC at 90 volts and 20 hertz in North America. While the sound produced is still called a “ring”, more-recently manufactured telephones electronically produce a warbling, chirping, or other sound. Variation of the ring signal can be used to indicate characteristics of incoming calls (for example, rings with a shorter interval between them might be used to signal a call from a given number).

History of ring tones

The first commercial mobile phone with ring tones was Japanese NTT DoCoMo Digital Mova N103 Hyper by NEC, sold on May 1996. It had a few preset songs in MIDI format. On September 1996, IDO, the current au, sold Digital Minimo D319 by Denso. It was the first mobile phone which a user could input an original melody, rather than the preset songs. These phones proved to be popular in Japan. Kētai Chakumero Do-Re-Mi Book (ケータイ着メロ ドレミBOOK, "Mobile Ringtones Do-Re-Mi Book"), a book published on July 1998 introducing the "notes" of popular songs sold more than 3.5 million copies.

The first downloadable mobile ring tone service was created and delivered in Finland in autumn 1998 when a Finnish mobile operator Radiolinja (today Elisa) started their service called Harmonium. Invented by Vesa-Matti Pananen., the Harmonium contained both tools for individuals to create monophonic ring tones and a mechanism to deliver them over-the-air (OTA) via SMS to a mobile handset. On November 1998, Digitalphone Groupe, the current SoftBank Mobile, started the similar service in Japan.

The service concept spread quickly in Europe and Asia and developed into a multi-billion dollar industry. A ring tone service was one of the very first successful m-commerce services, with social media features like composing, sharing, and rating ring tones. The Harmonium also quickly created a market for high-quality professional ring tones and commercial ring tone libraries.