Digital love: the mobile industry gears up for Valentines Day

Christmas and Valentines Day really pull a big reaction of messaging in the mobile industry. MMS providers go into hyper-publicity mode, reminding everyone that you can send a cute animation to your loved ones rather than a card. So, as we’re within a week of Valentines Day, I’ve been getting a lot of press contacts about the day. And out of the many press releases, I’ve found two that I find rather interesting. MMS analytics provider Amethon looks at MMS content, and mobile navigation company CoPilot launches a Love Search function.

Amethon:

According to Amethon, only 50% of the MMS sent on Valentine’s Day will be photo-messages. The rest will be made up of the eCards, animations and videos created by professional MMS content providers.

Michael Stone, CEO at Amethon explained that JPEG photo files only make up about 45% of the total MMS traffic. A large amount of the rest is made up from animated GIFs: “Our studies in a number of operators around the world suggest that only half of all MMS traffic is generated by picture messaging – people taking a photo or video with the phone and sending it to family or friends. Picture messages are generally only sent once or twice but around 50% of all MMS content is.”

CoPilot:

CoPilot is one of the better mobile navigation services around – it’s app will set you back quite a few bob, but it basically turns your phone into a GPS navigation device. Recently it announced the launch of a free Local Internet Search function… and Valentines Day is now rather smartly being turned into a promotional opportunity for that new service. CoPilot Love is a competition that you can enter (by telling CoPilot how much you love it), to win prizes including pink champagne, chocolates, iTunes vouchers, upgrade keys to the full European version of CoPilot, and upgrade keys for the Premium Live Services.

For the actual “Love Search” thing, CoPilot simply suggests that most people leave their Valentines Day planning until the last minute anway, and that its Local Search function can help you plan out what you want to do on the day.