Valentine's Day rang in more than 1.06 billion SMS and MMS messages, setting the example for this year's staggering growth in mobile messaging volumes.

VeriSign announced that in its latest quarterly index, the first quarter of 2009 registered a new high of 84 billion messages. Last year, the company delivered more than 224 billion messages across mobile messaging platforms.

"Mobile messaging continues to play an even greater role in how the world communicates," said Michael Campbell, senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing for VeriSign's Messaging and Mobile Media Division, Mountain View, CA. "The mobile phone has become the most pervasive, personal communications tool available.

"We hardly ever leave our home without it," he said. "There are more than 4 billion mobile subscribers across the world today and those users are seeking new ways to save time and money and improve their experience while on the move 24/7/365."

VeriSign is an Internet infrastructure service provider that delivers 60 percent of the mobile message and text traffic throughout the inter-carrier market nationwide. The quarterly index of mobile messaging statistics was compiled by the messaging and mobile media division of VeriSign.

According to VeriSign, the mobile messaging growth in the U.S. remains a bright horizon in the mobile world.

Since consumers and businesses alike rely on mobile messaging, VeriSign's chunk of the messaging market is rapidly growing.

The company claims to be making the proper investments to continue delivering the reach, reliability and scalability necessary for continued growth in messaging over the rest of 2009.

"SMS is a lowest common denominator technology that is easy to use, appeals to all consumer demographics, and access to it is now 100 percent available on mobile devices in the U.S.," Mr. Campbell said.

"We have seen that SMS is so pervasive in all facets of life appealing to consumers young and old and integrating into our lives in more and more ways," he said.

VeriSign expected a great deal of traffic on Valentine's Day, a typical initiator of high volume messaging as texters type sweet nothings to their sweet hearts.

However, 2009's Valentine's Day was the busiest texting day of the quarter and busiest Valentine's Day on record.

Also in Quarter 1 of 2009, VeriSign's combined mobile messaging networks facilitated an average of approximately 932 million messages per day. This number is up 18.5 percent from the previous quarter and a staggering 96 percent from Quarter 1 of 2008.

Cumulatively, VeriSign delivered 82.3 billion peer-to-peer and over 1.6 billion application-to-peer messages in Quarter 1, 2009.

The MMS and PictureMail platforms at VeriSign are also experiencing a growth spurt in MMS traffic. PictureMail volumes increased 130 percent and 84 percent compared to the first quarter of 2008. In total, VeriSign delivered over 1.1 billion MMS messages in the first quarter of this year.

"These results demonstrate how mobile messaging remains resilient in these challenging economic times," Mr. Campbell said.

It's clear in the mobile scene that consumers are texting more and more, but many businesses are turning to the mobile channel as well, to connect with consumers on a personal level.

VeriSign Mobile Enterprise Services responded to this shift in interest toward application-to-peer enterprise applications made evident by an 88 percent year-over-year growth rate of messages delivered through the network from the first quarter of 2008 to the same quarter the following year.

Financial services particularly displayed a 63 percent increase in messaging traffic during the same period of time.

"Financial institutions will continue to realize the value of the mobile channel," Mr. Campbell said. "As they look to compete in a tough economic environment, they will look towards the ubiquity and reach of SMS to offer mobile banking to all their customers.

"We won't be surprised to start seeing enterprises leveraging mobile messaging to receive real-time feedback on their products and operations via SMS surveys and real-time messages that give them an indication of how things are really doing," he said.