Mobile ecard provider Sharpcards is gearing up for one of the busiest times of the year for mobile messaging, with an exclusive range of premium branded ecards for this Valentine's Day.
According to figures from Portio Research, the mobile messaging market generated around $130 billion (90 billion) in revenues by the end 2008, and is on target to reach $224 billion by 2013. Although the majority of this is made up of SMS, the popularity of MMS has been increasing steadily over the past few years. In 2009, MMS is expected to generate over $31 billion worldwide, $1 billion more than SMS was generating five years ago. MMS is also being predicted to pass 115 billion messages by the end of 2011.
In 2008, Sharpcards sold over 1.5 million mobile personal greetings worldwide, with around 20% (300,000) of those sales coming from Valentine's Day alone. Key trends from last years Valentines Day sales were:

• 40% of mobile ecards were bought in the four hours between 8am and 12 noon (around 30,000 greetings sold per hour).
• 56% of sales occurred before midday and less than 2% after 10pm. 
• It seems that most people in the world are soft at heart, with cute and cuddly ecards outselling kinky one by 3:1 in 2008.
• Sharpcards sent 363 marriage proposals through mobile ecards on Valentines Day 2008.

In the last year, MMS has grown by 30% and with 10 million picture messages sent a week, it's clear that people want to put more emotion and personality into their messages, says Sharpcards CEO, Will Walsh. Obviously, Valentine's Day is a time, more than any, when people like to share their emotions. Sometimes you just can't get your feelings across in text or a phone call, which is why people are turning to mobile greetings. As the old saying goes: A picture is worth a thousand words.
Sharpcards currently runs enhanced messaging services for Orange, T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, H3G and other major operators around the world.