Once upon a time children were content to get a doll or an action figure from Santa Claus. Then they started asking for tamagotchis. This Christmas, things might be a little different. Harry Potter paraphernalia aside, it would be a fair guess that on December 25th an electronic pet of another kind will be peeping out from many Christmas stockings - the mobile phone.
The funny thing is there is now very little difference between toys and mobile phones and "My First Telephone" is more likely to be a Motorola than a Tomy.
Mobile phones are not just something you make and take calls on; they have become more like toys. Give a tech-savvy and fashion-conscious kid (of any age) a mobile phone and free rein and within a short while the original piece of hardware will be less recognisable than Make-up Barbie after a makeover.
Although mobile phones generally come in one colour and with some standard sound and picture settings, within minutes they can be transformed - with the addition of a clip-on cover - from a dull, business-like navy machine to a Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer seasonal special. The dull tone can be re-set to Jingle Bells and once December 31st comes around, it can be re-set again to play Auld Lang Syne.
Probably one of the best-known sources for downloadable mobile phone ringtones and logos in Ireland is Dialaring.com. Company managing director Bill Sunner says that the market for ringtones and logos is actually a diminishing market worldwide as most people have got what they want at this stage.
Sunner believes that ringtones appeal to people because "everybody likes to put their own individual touch to whatever it is they have, whether it be their office their desk, their apartment, their clothes.
"I think people sometimes think it reflects their personality, depending on what kind of a ringtone they have. As many phones would now have more than one ringtone, they can reflect people's moods and they can chop and change, depending on the owner's mood. They can even have different ringtones to let you know a certain person is calling."
MobileMagic.ie, another logo and ringtone provider, has gone one step further. It offers animated screensavers for the Nokia 3330 and, according to business development manager Rachel Supple, people who download this to their phone will be able to see Santa landing on a roof and getting into a chimney.
Other festive features include special "Spoof 'ems" - the latest craze on the block. Rather like a mobile-phone version of Beadle's About, someone is set up, over the phone. One of them is a very funny post-Christmas party call.
One route to getting the most out of a mobile phone seems to be via the internet, and Digifone has a suite of games available on www.dol.ie. The selection includes a new seasonal game which is playable on WAP phones. Lost Christmas is a role-playing game with one simple objective - Save Christmas! Jonathon and his trusted dog, Max, must embark on the adventure of a lifetime to save Christmas.
And Christmas, it seems, will be saved for many , if we are to believe the advertising, by the gift of a mobile phone. The current Meteor advertising campaign shows a disappointed-looking girl with a drill in her hand - obviously not what she was expecting for Christmas. The campaign advises: "Give them what they want." And what many people want out of a mobile phone it seems is text messaging. (Texting may ease some parents' worries about mobiles' health risk, though you could get texter's thumb.)
A June 2000 report published by Amβrach Consulting (see the graph below) showed exactly how much the SMS generation fell in love with the constant interruption of SMS messaging on their mobile phone. It showed that a third of 15- to 24-year-old mobile phone users are sending over 20 text messages a week. The most frequent users of SMS (Short Message Service) text messaging are single people under-24who are students.
According to Amβrach, this segment of mobile phone owners are likely to be on relatively low incomes and concerned about the high cost of making mobile calls. They choose text messaging as a cheaper alternative and are also more likely to have chosen a pre-paid service option.
Daily SMS traffic over the Eircell Vodafone network is approximately three million SMS per day. Over busy periods, this figure rises. Over Christmas and New Year, for example, it could reach five million.
Digifone customers send a total of two million SMS a day, while Meteor, which has gained 70,000 customers since its February 2001 launch, has an average of three texts being sent per customer per day.
When e-mail first became popular, it was no longer the in thing to do to ring up a radio station or MTV and ask them to play a request for "everybody who knows me". People started e-mailing DJs and presenters.
The same thing has happened with text messaging. Presenters as diverse as Eamonn Dunphy on The Last Word on Today FM and 2FM's late-night DJ Rick O'Shea ask listeners to text them.
MTV has gone one step further and has a txt request show. The phrase "answers on a postcard" may also slip out of use - many competitions run on broadcast media now require text entry.
It no longer takes the weekly pop music charts to decide what's hot and what's not - text polling is popular and listeners and viewers are often asked to text in to decide, for example, if song A or B should be played. The fight for a Christmas number one could be well over even before the Christmas edition of Top of the Pops is screened.
