Global mobile content retailer Mobile Streams has launched an off-deck portal of its mobile Internet store Ringtones.com, which will enable one-click mobile payments.

Mobile phone users in the U.S. will now be able to directly access Ringtones.com and the 20,000-plus ringtones available from music industry stars such as Katy Perry, Coldplay, Flex and J. Holiday. Mobile Streams is using Bango's mobile payments services for the recent U.S. launch of http://m.Ringtones.com.

"We're live, we've launched an off-portal destination in the U.S., and while the carriers are very strong in the States, there are still a lot of direct-to-consumer distribution opportunities as well," said Simon Buckingham, CEO of Mobile Streams, New York. "With the new search-engine relationship that carriers have, we can access their consumers that way.

"Our billing mechanism has evolved from SMS, and we've been able to partner with billing partners like Bango to enable single-click billing through carriers like AT&T and Sprint," he said. "One-click payments help our conversion rate, because with each additional click we lose 30 percent of our consumers.

"Single-click is important for take-up, and we're looking forward to the likes of Verizon Wireless supporting that type of experience later on in the year."

Virgin Mobile USA has also partnered with Bango and Mobile Streams, and T-Mobile USA is launching in a few months.

The target demographic is primarily teenagers. The single biggest group is teenage African-American females, with many twenty-something males as well.

Mobile Streams is partnering with some of the mobile affiliate ad networks, including Yahoo and Google for search marketing, Microsoft Advertising, itsmy.biz, mobile ad networks such as AOL's Third Screen Media and AdMob, as well as self-serve mobile ad networks such as Mojiva, BuzzCity and DeckTrade.

In addition to MP3 ringtones and polyphonic ringtones, subscribers to the store can also choose from a wide selection of graphics and games.

The store has thousands of pieces of content provided by more than 500 different music publishers and labels as well as media content suppliers.

With a presence on dozens of carrier portals around the world, Ringtones.com now offers its extensive choice of content channels directly to the U.S. mobile consumer through http://m.Ringtones.com with off-portal WAP payments powered by Bango.

For a subscription charge of $9.99 per month, m.Ringtones.com customers have more than 35,000 music tracks and artists to choose from, including a wide range of homegrown and international favorites.

The store offers content choices with everything from polyphonic and MP3 ringtones to videos, wallpapers and games.

"Bango is also addressing some of the challenges around analytics with their robust analytics engine that can identify which keywords and which campaigns are converting," Mr. Buckingham said. "Bango is quite good in terms of letting us really measure and analyze the site, what's working and what isn't working so we can tune our marketing budgets accordingly."

Mobile Streams has been retailing mobile content on-portal for more than five years in the U.S., but this launch marks the company's first major off-portal Ringtones.com platform.

The growing volume of search queries for mobile content make the timing of this launch appropriate, according to Mobile Streams.

Ringtones.com is powered by Mobile Streams' technology platform, MultiMobi.

Designed and built by Mobile Streams, a strategic partner of Liberty Media, MultiMobi ensures that customers have an uncomplicated shopping experience with features such as arrival reactivity, storefront personalization, dynamic content generation and one-click purchasing.

Ringtones.com has already been launched as an off-portal mobile content store in Britain and Argentina, continuing Mobile Streams' strategy of building an off-portal retailing business to supplement its existing on-portal content retailing operations.

According to Nielsen Mobile, 40 million people in the U.S. regularly browse the mobile Web, and many of these will be entering ?ringtones' in their search boxes, according to Bango.

Mobile Streams provides their customers with a mobile Web browsing and purchase billing flow for m.Ringtones.com that is as familiar as using a standard Web site.

This "safe" mobile Web approach from Bango is already powering subscription services for the Big 6 content providers in the U.S., where subscription is the mainstay of the mobile content market, according to the partners.

Compared to other payment methods, Bango claims that its WAP payment experience -- with one-click purchases that appear on mobile subscribers' phone bill -- delivers the highest conversion rates and fewer consumer complaints.

Bango's other clients include mobile content providers such as FlyCell, Biongiorno, Thumbplay and Dada.

"A lot more people are browsing on their phones, so Mobile Streams is looking to monetize that search traffic, and with their domain name they'll be top of the list," Sarah Keefe, Cambridge, Britain-based vice president of marketing solutions for Bango. "Once people come into the mobile Web site, they can find a piece of content they want to buy, we've already identified their phone and we can put it on their phone bill, so they can buy content straight away.

"It's a different model than what's been done traditionally, and conversion rates much higher because it's easier for the users -- it's similar to carrier on-deck experience," she said. "More people are browsing and searching with their handset, and carriers are now enabling advertising on their portals that take users to an off-portal site."