150K installs that drop to zero the moment ads stop: how a Vietnamese studio's ringtone-wallpaper pack got "hot"
What it is An Android two-in-one "ringtones + wallpapers" app. Download, set ringtones in one tap, and get HD / 4K / anime wallpapers. Full of ads, with $1.99–14.99 in-app purchases.
Why it took off Vietnamese studio Midas Studio bought installs in several waves across India, the Philippines, the Gulf, and Western Europe. The titles copy the hottest search term on Play, "Ringtones for Android." During the days ads stopped, installs were nearly zero.
DHow to follow this Don't build another ringtone and wallpaper app. If you want to play in ringtones, build what they don't have: AI custom ringtones generated from songs, voices, or names, and get users through short TikTok videos.
- Data (updated daily) · first launch 2026-08-27 · 11-07 installs 156,434
Android · Total installs worldwide Data 2026-10-29 → 2026-11-07 (10 days, 10 observations). Google's detail page only refreshes install counts every other day, so a flat day doesn't mean nobody installed.Android · Ratings count (cumulative) Data 2026-10-29 → 2026-11-07 (10 days, 10 observations)
Ringo: Ringtones for Android launched in Aug 27. By Nov 6 it had 156K installs, gained 7K in the last 34 days, and charts in the "Personalization" free chart in 7 countries including the UAE, the Philippines, and India. But its install curve comes in bursts, and for several days in between, only a few people installed it each day. There's nothing to learn from the product itself. What's worth watching is how a Hanoi studio uses paid acquisition to sell again something others built over a decade ago. Below I explain what it relies on, where the money comes from, and why you most likely shouldn't follow it.
A one-star review from an Indian user
The first reviews Ringo received on Google Play cluster around Sep 20, the days it first scaled up. Indian user Simanta Mondal left a one-star review on Sep 21, half English and half Hindi: "nery very low quality app, all time ad ati rahti hain. 3rd class experience." (Very low quality, ads all the time, third-class experience.) 7 people marked it helpful. The day before, Susie Beard wrote: "It keeps trying to jump me to TikTok, can't even get the ringtones." On Oct 2, another review was just one line: "can't get to it."
These three reviews pretty much sum up the app: a batch of users from cheap-traffic countries like India, pulled in by ads, drowned in more ads once inside, and an app that wants users to "jump to TikTok," most likely because of TikTok install ads run by the ad network inside the app (inferred).
What it is
An Android "ringtones + wallpapers" two-in-one app. Browse music ringtones, funny ringtones, and HD / 4K / anime wallpapers, then download and set them as your call ringtone or lock screen in one tap. The store listing says "Contains ads" and "In-app purchases," priced at $1.99–14.99, most likely ad removal or a weekly subscription (unverified).
Zedge built this same combination over a decade ago. Today Zedge has 659M installs and ranks #1 in the UAE's Personalization Top Grossing (Google Play, 11-06). Ringo has nothing different in content or features.
Why it grew: paid-acquisition bursts
Based on third-party estimates of daily installs (AppstoreSpy, where single-day numbers are averaged, so only the shape is meaningful), its growth looks like this:
| Timeline | New installs | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| 08-27 → 09-01 | About 7,300 | First push |
| 09-02 → 09-20 | About 240 / day | Almost stopped |
| 09-21 → 09-25 | +16k | The first wave, and the reviews came in at this time too |
| 09-30 → 10-04 | +38k | The biggest wave |
| 10-05 → 10-07 | A few dozen a day | Stopped |
| 10-21 → 10-26 | +19k | Another wave |
| 10-27 → 10-29 | About 4 per day | Stopped |
| 10-30 → 11-05 | +53k | The latest wave, reaching 156K |
During the stretch when it stopped, installs were in single digits per day, which suggests it had almost no organic users and all its growth was bought (inferred, high confidence). The charts it reached match this too: its best ranks were #83 in India's Personalization free chart, #91 in the UAE, #137 in Saudi Arabia, and #142 in the Philippines, plus the Netherlands, Germany, Nigeria, South Africa, and Poland. That's cheap-traffic countries mixed with the Gulf and Western Europe, where ad prices are higher. It never charted in overall or Top Grossing.
Another clue is the rating: 156K installs with only 107 ratings, averaging 0.07%. Comparable older apps sit between 0.6% and 2.7% (Zedge 2.7%, the older Trela app with a matching keyword 0.6%).
Which channels it ran on and how much it spent can't be seen from outside. Nothing turned up in the Meta Ad Library or Google's Ads Transparency Center. The most likely source is Google's app ads, or traffic swapped between ad networks (speculation, unverified).
Two smaller tactics
Riding search terms in the title. "Ringtones for Android" is the biggest search term in this category on Play, and also the name of an older app, Trela, which has been listed for 2013 years with 103M installs. Ringo puts the whole phrase in the back half of its title, then fills the description with HD wallpaper, 4K wallpaper, anime wallpaper, and free ringtones.
The ratings sit at two extremes. The star breakdown is 1-star 35 and 5-star 71, with zero 2 to 4 stars (Google Play, 11-06). The store description ends with "please consider leaving a 5 star rating." This looks like the app asks users if they're happy first and only sends happy ones to the store (inferred), which keeps the score around 3.6 instead of low enough to kill paid acquisition. Heads up: Google Play's policy doesn't allow this kind of good/bad routing of rating prompts.
Who's behind it
The developer on Play is called Office Master Studio. Its developer info lists an individual, Nguyen Van Hien, in Thanh Oai district, Hanoi, and the support email uses a spelling of the Vietnamese "EAS joint stock company." The website is midasstudio.app. Following that site turns up at least 4 developer accounts from the same company (Midas Studio App, MEDICI TECHNOLOGY GROUP, Echola AI, Office Master Studio), with 15 apps, most listed within the last 2026 years, totaling about 4.4M installs: a zipper lock screen at 1.57M, car wallpapers at 430K, 4K live wallpapers at 390K, a PDF reader, an IPTV player, AI car makeovers, anime wallpapers, cleaning tools, and browsers. Their in-app purchases are almost all the same $1.99–14.99 tier.
The site calls itself an "AI mobile app studio," is based in Hanoi, and is hiring for "User Acquisition" (paid user acquisition). In other words, Ringo isn't anyone's original work. It's one of a dozen-plus packs a studio that knows how to buy installs puts out.
Where the money comes from
Full-screen interstitial and rewarded ads are the core, with in-app purchases as a supplement. The logic: buy installs at very low prices in India, the Philippines, and Nigeria, and lift average revenue with the higher ad rates in the Gulf and Western Europe. Run a wave for 3–7 days, stop, check the payback, and if it pencils out, run another wave. The profit in this business comes from acquisition efficiency, not the product. Its revenue is unknown since it never charted in Top Grossing. The reviews are all complaints about ads, so retention is most likely very poor (inferred).
Who it's competing with
| Competitors | Scale (Google Play, 11-06) | Relationship to Ringo |
|---|---|---|
| Zedge Wallpapers & Ringtones | 659M installs, +900k in 7 days | Category leader, with a user-uploaded content library and a brand |
| Ringtones for Android™(Trela) | 103M, listed 2013 years ago | Ringo's title rides on its name |
| Ringtones for Android Phone | 49.7M, +260k in 7 days, #7 in the US Music Free chart | Same keyword in the title, a heavyweight in organic traffic |
| Phone Ringtones & HD Wallpaper | 99K, listed 10-09, +7K in 71 days | Same period, same combo, same playbook, growing faster than Ringo |
| Built-in phone ringtones / Google wallpapers | Google wallpapers 1.4B | Free, no ads, little content |
| RingOS, Ringoz.ai, Garage Ringtones | Mainly iOS | Uses TikTok content, does AI custom ringtones, with a top single video at 868K views |
In the personalization category, newly launched packs mostly follow the same approach: reskin, ride keywords, buy installs. Ringo has no discussion on TikTok, X, or in media, and few people know it exists. But this playbook is no secret among utility studios in Vietnam, India, and Pakistan.
If it were you
D. Know about it, but don't follow it. What Ringo proves isn't that "ringtone-wallpaper apps still have a chance." It's that a studio with a paid acquisition team can add tens of thousands of installs a month to any thin shell. The only thing you could match is the product, and its product has nothing in it.
Who it suits: utility teams already running ad monetization, with ad accounts and a payback model, who can treat it as a reusable template: the "brand name: top search term" title format, a 3–5 day wave cadence, mixing cheap-traffic and high-value regions, and spreading risk across multiple accounts.
Who it doesn't suit: indie devs who have never run ads and want to rely on organic store traffic. This category has Zedge and a pile of old accounts with hundreds of millions of installs holding the search results. A new pack with no paid spend gets zero. Ringo's own stop-spend days prove it.
How to do it: if you must touch ringtones, don't build another two-in-one shell. Build what Ringo lacks: let users generate their own ringtone from a song, a voice clip, or a name. That's the route RingOS and Garage Ringtones took to grow on TikTok. It's a different product with different competition.
How to acquire users: a shell means paid acquisition only. You have to bring cost per install below ad payback, which takes experience and money spent on trial and error. If you build AI custom ringtones, use before-and-after short videos like "I turned my name into a ringtone" to find traffic on TikTok.
When to move: this category has no window. It has been like this for over a decade. What could change at any time is how Google Play handles incentivized ratings and excessive ads.
What would show I'm wrong: if in the one or two weeks after Ringo stops spending, installs stay at several hundred a day or more and the rating count keeps climbing, it has built up organic traffic, and there's room in the category for new packs to hold a spot. Or if it reaches the top 50 of a country's Personalization Top Grossing, that would mean these thin shells earn more in-app revenue than expected.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one Zedge Wallpapers & Ringtones Android About 2009 659M installs, #1 in AE Personalization Top Grossing Category leader, with a UGC content library and a brand; Ringo is a thin reskin of the same combo Ringtones for Android™(Trela) Android 2013-10 103M installs Ringo's title copies its name and search term directly; the other app is an old account with organic installs Ringtones for Android Phone Android 2022-10 49.7M installs, +260k/7 days Organic-install heavyweight on the same keyword title, 4.8 stars Phone Ringtones & HD Wallpaper(Anderson Tony) Android 2026-10-09 99k installs, +71k/7 days A new pack from the same period, same combo, same playbook, growing faster System ringtones / Google Wallpapers Big-company features — 1.4B installs (Wallpapers) Free, no ads, but little content RingOS / Ringoz.ai / Garage Ringtones iOS 2025–2026 Highest single TikTok video: 868k views Runs on TikTok content and creators, with AI custom ringtones; Ringo has zero TikTok presence - Where users come from
- Inferred Paid user acquisition (in waves; channel likely Google App Campaigns or ad networks): the install curve is pulsed, with single-digit daily installs on off days; rating rate 0.068%, versus 0.6–2.7% for comparables; charted only in IN/AE/SA/PH/NL/DE/NG/ZA/PL category charts; the parent company's site is hiring for User Acquisition. Neither the Meta nor the Google ad library has it (those two libraries only track a named list of products).
- Confirmed ASO keyword piggybacking: the title "Ringo: Ringtones for Android" shares its name with Trela's 100M-install app; the description is stuffed with HD/4K/anime wallpaper and free ringtones.
- Inferred review prompting: star distribution [35,0,0,0,71], zero 2–4 star reviews; the description ends by asking for 5 stars
- Inferred Cross-promotion within a portfolio: under the same sites midasstudio.app / ecola.ai there are 4 accounts, 15+ apps and roughly 4.4M installs; whether they cross-promote is unverified.
Why Ringo: Ringtones for Android (com.ringo.ringtones.wallpaper.app) got traction
Research date 2026-11-06. Sources: our googleplay library (app_profile / app_day / app_day_ext, AppstoreSpy estimates / chart_rank / app_snap), metaads / googleads libraries, the Google Play store page (read via r.jina.ai), the midasstudio.app site, Jina search, TikHub, x-radar.
Bottom line
It didn't get there on product. A Vietnamese (Hanoi) reskin factory, Medici Technology Group / Midas Studio App, batch-publishes tool and wallpaper apps from multiple developer accounts, and Ringo is one of them. Its title copies Play's highest-volume search term, "Ringtones for Android". It buys users in several pulsed waves, targeting countries where traffic is cheap or ad CPMs are high: India, the Gulf, the Philippines, South Africa, the Netherlands, Germany. Revenue comes from full-screen ads plus in-app purchases (subscriptions) at $1.99–14.99. On days without paid buys, installs are close to zero.
1. How to read the data
- Installs: 156,434 total, +34,298 over the last 7 days (googleplay library, 2026-11-06). Store launch date 2026-08-27, latest version 1.1.2,11-05.
- Install curve since launch (app_day_ext, AppstoreSpy estimates; daily numbers are smoothed, so read them as trend only):
- 08-27 launch, 09-01 reached 7,282 (first 5 days about 1.4k/day, looks like a launch-week buy)
- 09-02 → 09-20 grew slowly, about 240/day (11.6k)
- 09-21 → 09-25 +16k; 09-30 → 10-04 +38k (to 67k)
- 10-05 → 10-07 only +13–99 a day; 10-08 → 10-09 +12k; 10-10 → 10-11 12 a day
- 10-12 → 10-20 a few hundred a day; 10-21 → 10-26 +19k (to 103k)
- 10-27 → 10-29 4 a day; 10-30 → 11-05 +53k (to 156k)
- How to read it: installs stayed close to 0 on the days paid spend was off, so there's almost no organic traffic; all the growth comes in bursts tied to ad spend. (Play install counts themselves update in batches every few days, which explains part of the 0 single-day figures, but 10-27 through 10-29 running at single digits per day for consecutive days can only mean they weren't buying ads.)
- Charts it has hit: only personalized category free charts, best ranks IN #83, AE #91, SA #137, PH #142, NL #149, DE #152, NG #160, ZA #162, PL #167 (chart_rank, since 10-29). Never charted on an overall chart, never on Top Grossing.
- Ratings: 107 ratings against 156k installs, only 0.068%. Comparable heavyweights sit at 0.6%–2.7% (Zedge 2.73%, Trela's Ringtones for Android™ 0.60%, Ringtones for Android Phone 0.60%); the same developer's Zipper Lock Screen is at 0.56%.
- Star distribution is [1★ 35, 2★ 0, 3★ 0, 4★ 0, 5★ 71] (app_snap 11-06): nothing in the middle, polarized at both ends. This looks like classic review prompting: the app pops up a question about satisfaction, sends satisfied users to the store to give 5 stars, and keeps unsatisfied users inside. Add the line at the end of the store description, "please consider leaving a 5 star rating". Those who give 1 stars are the ones who weren't caught.
- Review content (Play store page): "very low quality app, all time ad", "constantly wants to jump you to tiktok and you can't get any ringtones", "can't get to it". This shows monetization runs on heavy interstitial and rewarded ads; the "jump to TikTok" likely comes from TikTok / TikTok Lite placements in the ad network. The user experience is poor.
2. Who's behind it
- The developer name on Play is Office Master Studio, the developer site is midasstudio.app, and the support email is [email protected] (a Vietnamese spelling of "công ty cổ phần EAS", meaning EAS joint-stock company). The store page's "About the developer" names an individual, Nguyen Van Hien, with an address in Thanh Oai district, Hanoi. In other words, this is an account registered under a personal identity.
- Several more accounts sit under the same site domains (midasstudio.app / ecola.ai): Midas Studio App (email [email protected]), MEDICI TECHNOLOGY GROUP, Echola AI, Office Master Studio. Our library shows 15+ apps, most launched in the last 2026 years, adding up to roughly 4.4M installs:
- Zipper Lock Screen Customizer 1.57M (2026-07), Car Wallpaper HD & 4K Live 430k, 4K HD Live Wallpapers 390k, PDF Reader 250k, IPTV Smart Player 246k (2026-09), Midas: AI Car Modification 157k, Arteasy AR Draw 100k, Anipic anime wallpapers 85k (10-21), SweepAI cleaner 69k (10-21), Car Modify / CarDes, two AI car-modification apps at about 50k each (10-26 / 10-27), Zio Fast browser 36k (10-12), Silly Smile 22k (10-14).
- In-app purchase pricing is nearly identical ($1.99–14.99, $2.99–9.99), the same paywall template.
- The midasstudio.app site calls itself an "AI mobile app studio": 10 apps live on Play, averaging 4.1 stars, a remote team, an office in Hanoi, and it is hiring for User Acquisition (paid growth), with "ASO & growth" in the job description. AppBrain shows Midas Studio App active since 2025, with 8 apps and roughly 2M cumulative installs.
- (Accounts with similar names in the library, Midas Yellow Ltd and Hand of Midas Lab, have mismatched sites and emails, so they're excluded.)
III. Competitors
| Competitors | Platform | Launched | Scale | How it differs from Ringo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zedge™ Wallpapers & Ringtones | Android/iOS | Around 2009 | 659M installs, +7k over the last 900 days, AE personalized Top Grossing #1 | Category leader with a UGC content library and a brand; Ringo is a thin reskin of the same "ringtones + wallpapers" combo |
| Ringtones for Android™(Trela) | Android | 2013 | 103M, +46k/7 days | Ringo's title copies its name (and this search term); the other app is 13 years old, rated 4.2 stars |
| Ringtones for Android Phone(QR Code Scanner.) | Android | 2022 | 49.7M, +260k/7 days, US Music Top Free #7 | Same keyword title, but a heavyweight on organic installs |
| Music ringtones for android | Android | 2019 | 17.6M | Older similar apps |
| Phone Ringtones & HD Wallpaper(Anderson Tony) | Android | 2026-10-09 | 99k, +71k/7 days, ID Music chart #4 | A new pack from the same period, same combo, same playbook, growing faster than Ringo |
| Google Wallpapers / system ringtones | Big-company features | — | ₩1.4B | Free and built into the system, but little content |
| RingOS, Ringoz.ai, Garage Ringtones | Mainly iOS / TikTok | 2025–2026 | Top TikTok video at 868k views (garageringtones) | Runs on TikTok content and creators; Ringo doesn't show up in a single TikTok search |
| The wallpaper category at large (Wallcraft, the Silly Smile series, the Zipper lock-screen series) | Android | Various years | Millions to tens of millions | Most new packs in the personalized category use the same reskin-and-paid-acquisition playbook |
Bottom line: this category is already crowded, and Ringo has no product differentiation at all. Its only "distinctive" trait is the name: it collides with the well-known Ringo: Ringtones and Text Alerts from 2012 years ago (since removed from the store, its APK still circulates on APK sites), and the back half of the title takes the hottest search term.
4. Growth tactics
- Paid acquisition, in waves (inferred, strong evidence): the install curve is pulsed, with single-digit daily installs on off days; the rating rate is a tenth of comparables; spend targets IN / PH / NG / ZA, where traffic is cheap, plus AE / SA / NL / DE, where ad CPMs are high; the parent company's site is hiring for paid acquisition. Neither our Meta ad library nor the Google Ads Transparency Center shows it (those libraries only track a named list of products, so absence doesn't mean no spend). The most likely channel is Google App Campaigns or cross-network ad serving (speculative, unverified).
- ASO keyword piggybacking (confirmed): the title "Ringo: Ringtones for Android", whose back half shares its name with Trela's 100M-install older app; the description is stuffed with terms like HD wallpaper / 4K wallpaper / anime wallpaper / free ringtones.
- Review prompting (inferred): stars cluster at 1 and 5, and the description asks directly for a 5-star rating.
- Cross-promotion (speculative): the same company has a dozen or more wallpaper and tool packs that can funnel users to each other inside their own apps. The store page lists "More by Office Master Studio"; whether they actually cross-promote is unverified.
- None found: TikTok (TikHub search returns nothing), X (0 hits on x-radar), media coverage, Reddit discussions.
5. Where the money comes from
- Ads: reviews complain about heavy ads and forced redirects. Play labels it "Contains ads", and the data-safety section says location and app activity are shared with third parties, which is standard for ad monetization.
- In-app purchases at $1.99–14.99 (most likely weekly subscriptions or ad removal). Never charted on Top Grossing, so revenue scale is unknown.
- Payback logic: buy traffic cheaply in low-CPI countries, earn it back with interstitial and rewarded-ad eCPM plus a little subscription. Gulf countries have high eCPM and are used to lift average revenue. The profit in this business comes from acquisition efficiency, not the product.
6. How well known is it
Almost nobody knows about it yet. Across the web there are only auto-indexed pages from AppBrain, APKPure, and AppTally. No media coverage, no X discussion, no public revenue. But this playbook is common knowledge among the ringtone and wallpaper factories in Vietnam, India, and Pakistan. It's not a secret.
7. What's worth borrowing
- One person sets up several developer accounts and shares a single studio website, so if one app gets banned, the others aren't dragged down.
- Titles follow the pattern "Brand: top search term" (e.g. "Ringo: Ringtones for Android").
- Spend comes in waves: each wave runs 3–5 days, then pauses while they check returns before deciding on the next wave. Cheap traffic is mixed with high-eCPM regions.
- Negative-review interception keeps the rating above 3.6, so it never drops to a level where ads stop working.
- But the barrier to this playbook is only in acquisition and monetization tuning. Neither the product nor the content creates a moat, and there's no evidence of retention.
8. What's still uncertain
- Which channels they spend on, how much, and what ROI are unknown. Google UAC is a guess.
- Whether the in-app purchase is a subscription or a one-time purchase, and how much revenue it brings in, is unknown.
- Retention is unknown. The reviews are full of complaints, so retention is most likely poor.
- Whether the name "Ringo" deliberately piggybacks on an older app from 2012 years ago or is a coincidence can't be confirmed.
- Whether other apps from the same company use the same ad account is unverified.