Modtones Gears Up the Latin Garage to Roll Out New Genre of Ringtones
FOR RELEASE: Tuesday, February 11, 2003
Partnership Puts Beat of Wireless Latin Entertainment into Mobile Phones
MIAMI AND SAN FRANCISCO - From Salsa to Mambo, Tango to Tejano, Latin music is an integral and vibrant part of our musical landscape. And now, the sound of Latin music is available whenever your mobile phone rings.
Faith West Inc. announced today that its ModtonesT polyphonic ringtones - versions of popular songs that users download to alert them when their wireless phones ring - now includes tones from partner company WILAEN (Wireless Latin Entertainment). The hot and rhythmic "Latin Garage" will bring Latin Music to Modtones' Web site, where users can select Salsa, Latin Pop, Mexican Regional and Bossa Nova ringtones.
There are more than 35 million Latin Americans in the US, making it the country's largest minority, and their music is increasingly popular with non-Hispanic audiences around the world). Research also indicates that nearly half the Hispanic households in the US use mobile phones, and that Hispanics account for 25 percent of all current US wireless activations, according to WILAEN.
The Latin Garage will serve this growing market that wants to hear "A Dios le Pido," "A Puro Dolor," "Asereje" or "Y Tu Te Vas", among many other popular songs that been made famous by Ricky Martin, Enrique Iglesias, Mana, Los Panchos, Sergio Mendez, Tito Puente, Marc Anthony and Celia Cruz, among others when their mobile phones ring. WILAEN, which will create the ringtones for the Latin Garage, is a Miami-based company that enjoys top-level relationships with key strategic players in the Latin entertainment industry.
"Since launching Modtones last year, we've become one of the most popular applications downloaded by wireless users, which gives us a unique view into what consumers want," said Carolynne Schloeder, EVP of Faith West Inc. "Latin music is hot - both on the dance floor and in the wireless market - and with the Latin Garage we're not only able to offer the best selection of Latin ringtones, but the ones that sound the best as well."
Faith West is the US subsidiary of Faith Inc., which pioneered polyphonic ringtones in Japan with its advanced audio technology and close relationships with top carriers NTT DoCoMo and KDDI. Faith West creates and markets mobile content in the US and supports licensees of Faith's technology, such as major chipset and device manufacturers.
"Latin Garage has been developing first-class content to respond to the growing interest in Latin music and entertainment in the wireless space, and like Faith we aim to be the best," said Gabriel Abaroa, Chairman of WILAEN. "Together, we're now able to bring that experience to the worldwide markets that want their mobile phones to dance to the LATIN beat of a Samba or Salsa"
Modtones are available to Verizon Wireless customers who use the Verizon Z800, Motorola T720, LG VX-10 and Audiovox CDMA-9500, and will be coming to more mobile phones and wireless carriers in the near future.
To check out the tones in the Latin Garage, users can visit www.modtones.com.
About Faith West Inc.
Headquartered in San Francisco, Faith West works directly with US wireless carriers to deliver polyphonic and animated ringtones using Faith technology, and creates relationships with US-based content providers as well. The company also supports Faith's technology licensees and provides them with authoring tools to create mobile content in the proprietary CMX multimedia format developed by QUALCOMM, which uses Faith's wave table synthesizer.
About WILAEN
Miami Florida-based WILAEN is the leading mobile entertainment provider of Latin and Brazilian polyphonic ringtones, screen savers and wallpapers . WILAEN is positioned to become the top Record Label for the wireless space and a new source for promotional opportunities, producing and promoting top Latin and Brazilian mobile entertainment content. WILAEN specializes also in developing content for advanced mobile handsets in Asia and Europe that support Brew and Java entertainment applications.
Modtones is a trademark of Faith, Inc.
All other trademarks and service marks are the property of their legal holders.
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