Totally unscientific test: polling brands of mobile devices carried by ringtone…

Okay, now before anyone launches in to a tirade in the comments, this was an unscientific test. Very unscientific. But the results were rather interesting, so I think.

As I mentioned, I’m travelling this weekend, and have had the great pleasure of air travel within that. Waiting to get off the plane, during what seemed to be longest disembarkation ever, I was fascinated to listen to the variety (read: cacophony) of mobile ringtones/message alerts/start-up tones that formed some kind of freakish orchestra, as people turned their devices back on, in the plane (isn’t there some kinda rule on that….).

As I heard the tones, I realised I recognised them – and that oddly, they fell into three categories, at least in from the multiple tones that I could hear in the surrounding 40 or so seats.  So what were they?

• RIM BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) Message Alert & Ringtone
• Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPhone Message Alert
• Nokia (NYSE: NOK) Start-up Tone

Bizarrely, all the tones I heard fell in these three categories. Now admittedly, this is totally unscientific, but could we make some guesstimations about the kind of users?

• Well it was mostly business travellers on the flight – so could we say Businesspeople use mostly Nokia and RIM, apart from the tech-rebels who use iPhone?
• Could we say perhaps that Apple, Nokia, and RIM are the brands of the moment for Mobile devices?
• Or could we perhaps say Apple, RIM, and Nokia devices users are the most keen to get their messages?

Probably none of the above – but perhaps we can say that users of these brands have their devices turned up the loudest- any maybe ought to think about a bit of silent/flight-mode/power-down modes for their devices

Ben