Music player-enabled handsets surge in 2006

The music and entertainment business will be glad to hear that 23.5 million mobile- phone subscribers-one in 10 customers-in the United States now have handsets with integrated music players, up five times from the same period in 2005, according to recently published research from Telephia.
Nearly 20 percent of the new cellphones purchased in the third quarter of 2006 were music capable, and while many of those subscribers report loading music onto their handsets via computer, only 8.5 percent reported they had downloaded music over the air from a wireless carrier music store, according to the study.
Mobile phones with integrated music players have been in the U.S. market for more than two years and over-the-air music purchasing is still not available on all major carriers. Sprint Nextel Corp. and Verizon Wireless do offer such services.
Of the more than $3.5 billion spent on carrier advertising in 2006, $234.3 million was spent to promote music phones and music download services, according to the report.