According to Research and Markets, which has just issued its next generation study on ringtones, full song downloads for ringtones, as found in KDDI's enorously popular Chaka-Uta Full download service, are likely to be confined to Japan. The US and Europe will continue to use PCs for music transfer to handsets instead of over-the-air downloads, the report forecasts.

I'm not sure I concur with this forecast, as US and European operators are putting focus on driving OTA music downloads for recently launched music services. In terms of music for ringtones, M&R may be correct. Music downloads for entertainment may be the one driver that pushes operators to move away from high data service fees for consumers, shifting the costs instead to media downloads by the item.