Record number of mobile Christmas cards sent
Greetings become environmentally friendly and easier to send
DATE: 8 January 2009
According to mobile messaging service provider Fun Text, a record number of mobile Christmas cards were sent this holiday season. Not only does this show how MMS is taking off, but it’s also a greener way of communicating around the festive period – replacing paper cards.
"We’d sent over 100,000 multimedia cards long before the festive day arrived," said James Pycock, Business Development director at Fun Text. "Personally I already receive more ecards than paper cards at Christmas and mobile is the next wave for the digital generation. Mobile communications are simple, fast, don’t require franking or postage, and transcend geographical boundaries."
For operators, encouraging users to send MMS is a key area that needs attention. By tying MMS into events and festive seasons, operators can see the return on investment as mobile users rely on these to convey goodwill messages, rather than sending paper cards via ‘snail mail’.
"Not only do these mobile e-greetings appeal to the operators as they help improve ARPU, but they also appeal to the consumer from a moral and green angle," continued Pycock. "Around 900,000 trees were felled this year to supply the 9.7 billion greetings cards sent in the UK and US alone. And people are moving towards sending a quick enhanced mobile message rather than buying a card, a stamp from the Post Office and then hoping that it arrives in time."
This trend was established way back in December 1992, when the first ever SMS message sent by the engineer who was testing the service, was to wish someone a happy Christmas. With MMS now widely available the use of multimedia mobile messaging at Christmas is growing and Fun Text provides easy access to galleries of professional content, such as greetings cards, designed for MMS.
The Fun Text solution, available on a range of handsets including Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung, connects content with communication and provides integrated access across clients (Java, Symbian and Brew) as well as Wap and Web store fronts. It is already deployed by carriers such as Sprint, T-Mobile and 3. The service is offered from the messaging menu of many handsets and displays managed galleries of online professional content for fun, social and emotional messaging.
"With Christmas and the New Year now firmly behind us, we’re looking ahead to future events where greetings cards are normally used - such as Valentine’s Day. The next step is for brands to get involved to offer their consumers sponsored mobile messaging," concluded Pycock.
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About Fun Text
Fun Text is a leading content-based mobile messaging service that enables consumers to send and share professionally created multimedia on mobile. Deployed by major operators, such as Sprint, 3 and T-Mobile, the Fun Text service drives triple digit growth in MMS revenues.
It represents a new category of messaging between user-generated photo messaging and SMS where users can include professionally created content within messages to clearly express their emotions. While MMS is generally used to send camera phone pictures and SMS is used regularly for brief, functional statements, Fun Text creates a new, high-traffic, emotional communication medium as an alternative to both.
The mass-market messaging service combines the richness of MMS with the ease of use of SMS. Available as a handset application, it accesses an online content store and integrates with the address book on handsets from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola and other major manufacturers. Backed by global media companies such as Turner Broadcasting and American Greetings, Fun Text was also recently shortlisted as a finalist for best imaging company in the Mobile Entertainment Awards 2008.
For more information:
Fiona Goldsworthy
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+44 20 7403 8878