According to a report by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC), the size of the conventional music industry is around Rs.7 billion and is estimated to end at Rs.7.2 billion in 2006-07.

By the end of this financial year, COAI expects that the mobile music industry, which is growing at the rate of 40 percent to 50 percent, will be worth in excess of Rs.7.2 billion.

In a country like India where value-added services (VAS) was all about SMS, thundering success of mobile music consisting of ring tones, colour ring back tones (CRBT) and music clippings ring tones are lucrative business opportunities.

Courtesy a market where carrying a high-end mobile phone is a rage, coupled with the strong affinity of Indians toward Bollywood, mobile music has emerged as the most prominent segment of VAS providers.

A new challenge is that till date piracy has been seen or heard of in the music, Bollywood or software industry but now it has taken a leap forward and is slowly and steadily creeping into the VAS industry, trade watchers caution.

A major problem plaguing the mobile music industry particularly is that of illegitimate downloads. Illegitimate downloads refer to the free transfer of content, music from one handset to another (like music downloaded from a friend's mobile) and according to the music industry, pirated downloads have reached a volume that is three times the legal music.

Not too long ago, there was talk that an Indian mobile operator would screen the world's first full movie. Talks were on between "Rok Sako To Rok Lo" and Bharti Tele-Ventures to make the film available to customers with EDGE-enabled handsets in 11 Indian cities.