WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.-Nielsen Mobile announced a deal with Sprint Nextel Corp., the nation’s No. 3 wireless carrier, to monitor the operator’s weekly ringtone and full-length over-the-air song download sales data. Nielsen Mobile is a division of Nielsen Entertainment, which primarily provides TV viewership statistics.
“Sprint Nextel, coupled with its over-indexing, youth-oriented Boost Mobile service, are an important addition to our sales tracking and trend identifying offerings,” said Paul Leakas, general manager of Nielsen Mobile. “We continue to see significant sales growth in ringtones as well as other mobile entertainment sectors and are delighted to include Sprint Nextel and Boost Mobile in our U.S. market coverage.”
The deal is the second carrier agreement for Nielsen Mobile; in September the company inked a similar partnership with Verizon Wireless.
Nielsen Mobile launched in March 2005 and provides data for Billboard Magazine’s weekly ringtone charts. The company has been relatively quiet, however-in stark contrast to rivals M:Metrics and Telephia, which regularly churn out reports and press releases regarding the uptake of mobile content and applications.
