AT&T, Obviously
September 13th, 2007 by matt
Apple’s own special way of doing ringtones is this: You can only use songs purchased from the iTunes Store; you must pay an additional 99 cents on top of the price of the song itself; only a small subset of the songs at the iTunes Store are eligible; and, if you decide to create a second ringtone using a different segment of the same song which you’ve already paid for twice, you must pay for it again.
I guarantee AT&T has contract stipulations preventing Apple from offering ringtones for free. AT&T makes a ton of money selling ringtones. Obviously, AT&T doesn’t want its cash cow to be destroyed. I have no doubt they are forcing Apple to sell ringtones instead of allowing Apple to empower users to create ringtones for free.
Now, I’m not saying Apple wouldn’t charge users for ringtones if AT&T didn’t make them, but I do think AT&T is the driving force behind Apple’s current ringtones strategy.