The rise and fall of the ringtone industry and its effect on mobile entertainment, music, television, film, and politics. A decade ago, the customizable ringtone was ubiquitous. Almost any crowd of cell phone owners could produce a carillon of tinkly, beeping, synthy, musicalized ringer signals. Ringtones quickly became a multi-billion-dollar global industry and almost as quickly faded away. In The Ringtone Dialectic, Sumanth Gopinath charts the rise and fall of the ringtone economy and assesses its effect on cultural production. Gopinath describes the technical and economic structure of the ringtone industry, considering the transformation of ringtones from monophonic, single-line synthesizer files to polyphonic MIDI files to digital sound files and the concomitant change in the nature of capital and rent accumulation within the industry. He discusses sociocultural practices that seemed to wane as a result of these shifts, including ringtone labor, certain forms of musical notation and representation, and the creation of musical and artistic works quoting ringtones. Gopinath examines “declines,” “reversals,” and “revivals” of cultural forms associated with the ringtone and its changes, including the Crazy Frog fad, the use of ringtones in political movements (as in the Philippine “Gloriagate” scandal), the ringtone's narrative function in film and television (including its striking use in the films of the Chinese director Jia Zhangke), and the ringtone's relation to pop music (including possible race and class aspects of ringtone consumption). Finally, Gopinath considers the attempt to rebrand ringtones as “mobile music” and the emergence of cloud computing.

This volume examines many aspects impacting the digital divide in Latin America and the politics of digital inclusion including mobile youth identities, technology affordability, school transformation by digital media, the diffusion of e-commerce platforms and digital technology in SMEs.

In The Mobile Revolution senior executives of the world's leading mobile vendors, operators, service providers, software giants, chip kings, media and entertainment conglomerates, publishers, music moguls and brand marketers reveal their secrets and strategies. Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Qualcomm, Vodafone, Microsoft, Intel, Yahoo, New York Times, EMI, CNN, ABC, Disney, Warner Music and Universal are just a few of the names that feature. As a result, the book abounds with inside stories of great industry successes (and equally great flops!) as the narrative shifts constantly between the major cities of several continents - from Helsinki and Stockholm, London and Frankfurt, Tokyo and Seoul, Beijing and Singapore, New York City and Los Angeles, to Bangalore and Moscow. The Mobile Revolution is about the making of mobile markets and services worldwide, with a firm emphasis on innovation. Not just another account of technology innovation, it examines the rise of mobile services in the context of maturing and emerging mobile markets.

In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.

This book finally gives innovators an alternative to the painful writing of business plans. Not only an alternative but also a more effective, faster and easier way to convince investors and decision-makers: the Opportunity Case is a more user-friendly way of analyzing and presenting a project, which has been quickly adopted by many multinational corporations, public sector organizations as well as start-ups. It also addresses a central problem in existing businesses: many people have good ideas but very few of these innovations are actually implemented. The content of this book proposes the first practical process that has been demonstrated to boost innovation by up to 56%. "Winning Opportunities" presents the IpOp Model that outlines in a very concrete and down-to-earth way, the core process of innovation that successful entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs use, even unconsciously. The model acts as a simple hands-on guide for innovators who want to increase their chances of success. This structured and user-friendly roadmap helps innovators turn an idea into a tangible opportunity, outline measurable deliverables, learn how to address all the key issues critical to the success of their project, and identify early in the process whether an opportunity is worth pursuing. To illustrate its concepts, a large number of real-life examples are included as inspiration to the reader. Nespresso's strategy is used throughout the book to demonstrate each key step of the IpOp Model. It is the first time in print one can read about the strategy that shaped the fascinating success story of Nespresso, a $3 billion business with double-digit annual growth. Both Nespresso and the IpOp Model were developed in Switzerland, which was recently ranked No. 1 in innovation worldwide. Besides helping start-up initiators, the IpOp Model, as best practice for innovation, improves and complements the existing selection of innovation processes used by large organizations (staged gate, six sigma, etc.). Since learning is easier when emotions are included in the process, each chapter is preceded by a joke illustrating its serious content. The author, Prof. Raphael H Cohen took advantage of his 30+ years experience as serial entrepreneur, active CEO and business angel to write this book to encapsulate some of the key messages he has been teaching in top business schools and corporate environments since 2001. He is a keynote speaker and an expert in both professional agility and "weapons of mass innovation." Besides his responsibility as academic director of MBA programs, he provides executive education, mentoring, consulting and management services for senior executives, bankers, directors and entrepreneurs. He serves on the board of directors of several companies, including a Swiss bank, and is a regular contributor to several business publications. He obtained his Ph.D. in Economics in 1982"

Behind the Screen unveils Nokia's phenomenal success story through people, business initiatives and products. The book explores key moments, key technologies and key managers who contributed to the company's growth to become the world's favorite mobile phone brand. In the 1990s, Nokia outrivaled the traditional telecommunications companies Motorola and Ericsson by introducing innovative products that allowed personalization and gaming, and by exploiting new technologies which created businesses that didn't exist before, such as ringtones. Once the dot-com bubble had burst and 3G licence bidding had driven the industry into a downturn, Nokia faced new competition. Microsoft challenged Nokia in software, and Samsung and LG in hardware. Yet, Nokia was thriving as the competition heated up. It wasn't enough, because the biggest disruption in mobile communications was yet to come - the Internet. After Apple introduced the iPhone, Google gave away an open-source operating system for smartphones, and Skype generated revenues from a free telephone service, it wasn't enough for Nokia just to crank out products for the vast Indian market or tailor phones for AT&T or Vodafone. The industry had changed irrevocably. Whereas people in established markets wanted to access their favorite social networking services like Facebook or Twitter using a mobile device, people in emerging markets needed their first e-mail accounts. That's where Nokia's strategic Internet service Ovi came in. Behind the Screen unfolds the stories of businesses and technologies that Nokia created and turned into global successes or into miserable failures. It might be impossible to replicate Nokia's success, but the stories offer valuable nuggets on how to thrive in global markets.

In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.