Nordic Wireless had an interesting post on the success of Japan's new polyphonic ring tones download service called “EZ Chaku-Uta-Full”. These polyphonic songs play 64 notes simultaneously and can be downloaded to mobile phones via 3G networks.  The service made its debut in mid-November of last year, and notched 1 million downloads within a span of 48 days: on January 5th, KDDI and Okinawa Cellular (a KDDI company) announced that milestone.  As of January, only KDDI was offering chaku-uta in Japan, with four handset models being supported and a base of 410,000 users.

What does this mean?  Can we have a future in which there will be more chaku-uta downloads on the wireless networks than i-Tunes downloads on the wired Internet?  Well, the graph below certainly suggests that, as the chaku-uta full service has had a much faster ramp-up.  One key takeaway is that for some applications, the mobile network might actually be the preferred means to get a service (particularly with the advent of HSDPA and burst data rates of up to 14.2 Mbps).  Another one is that the iPod will get more competition not only from Dell, Virgin, Creative Labs, IRiber and Archos, but also from cell phone manufacturers, which will embed mp3 functionality on their handsets and team up with service providers offering chaku-uta-like services.