By: SRISAMORN PHOOSUPHANUSORN
Mobile phone users sent more than 22 million short messages and multi-media messages to their loved ones on St Valentine's Day.
Pakorn Pannachet, head of DTAC's value added service division, said his company's customers preferred to express their love on Valentine's Day by sending romantic SMS and MMS messages on their phones.
Throughout Valentine's Day on Feb 14, customers sent 9 million SMS messages, a 5.8% increase from the 8.5 million sent last year.
MMS messages sent by DTAC customers also rose slightly, from 650,000 last year to 660,000 this year.
The peak hours for DTAC customers to send Valentine's Day messages were midnight of Feb 13 to 1am of Feb 14.
He said last year, the peak hours were from 9am to 11am on Valentine's Day.
Mr Pakorn said DTAC customers send 3 million SMS messages and 90,000 MMS messages on average a day.
Pratana Leelpanang, market director of Advanced Info Service's wireless services, said AIS customers sent more than 12 million SMS texts on Valentine's Day, a rise of 19% from last year.
MMS messages rose sharply by 48% to 800,000 from last year.
Mr Pratana said the increase in SMS and MMS showed sending love messages by mobile phones remained popular because mobile services have many charms and features.
Messages can be sent in the form of a Cupid to represent their love for the recipient at all festivals and at all times, without boundaries.
Mr Pratana said calls to melody services (ringtones) also surged on Valentine's Day, particularly for music content which could be personalised to meet each customer's needs.
He said loading love songs as calling melodies surged 100% from a normal average loading of 20,000 songs a day.
Use of the Music2Gether *855 service rose fivefold to 20,000 songs from a normal average of 4,000 a day.
Source: Bangkok Post
