RIP Ringtones: $1B Industry Bites the Dust

The ringtone industry, which just two years ago was raking in $1 billion annually, will be dead and gone by 2016, analysts predict. Revenue is already plummeting—to about $750 million this year—for one obvious reason: Phones don’t ring very often anymore. “People used to talk on their cellphones,” one researcher tells Fortune. “We’ve become a text-centric society, which takes us away from ringtones.”

The average cellphone user now sends 584 texts per month, up from 218 two years ago; over the same period, calls have fallen 15%. Of course, it’s also possible that the public slowly realized how cheesy their ringtones were. The only thing worse than a cellphone ringing at an inappropriate time, after all, is a cellphone playing Bon Jovi at an inappropriate time. (More ringtones stories.)