One in five smartphones will have NFC by 2014, says new report

New market forecasts from Juniper Research are said to show rapid adoption of NFC services over the next 3 years, with at least 1 in 5 smartphones worldwide having NFC contactless functionality. Worldwide, Juniper forecasts almost 300 million NFC capable smartphones by 2014.

Juniper’s analysis shows that this growth will be driven in the short term by mobile network operators launching services in 20 early adopting countries before the end of 2012.

With more and more handset vendors integrating NFC chipsets, the new Juniper Research report forecasts that NFC payments and retail marketing capability via coupons and smart posters will become common amongst smartphone users in Western Europe, North America and other developed regions. 

NFC Retail Marketing & Mobile Payments Report author Howard Wilcox gave more details behind the report’s conclusions: “Juniper’s market analysis highlighted that, although there are still hurdles ahead, NFC prospects have been boosted by the succession of mobile operator and device vendor announcements. France is a case in point where operators expect to sell one million NFC devices this year.”

NFC is attracting the attention of all the major players such as Google, France Telecom Orange and Telefonica who see mobile commerce capability as vital. Juniper’s report pinpoints the main revenue opportunities but warns that business model structures still require development before NFC services will achieve critical mass.

Juniper’s new report contains comprehensive six year forecasts for all the key market parameters including users, transactions and values for both NFC ticketing and retail payments. It also breaks out the opportunities for value added retail marketing services through coupons and smart posters. Additionally the report pinpoints the drivers and constraints impacting the market, and tracks the status of 14 vendors addressing the market. 

Further findings include:

• North America will account for half of all NFC smartphones in 2014, followed by Western Europe.

• With many entities such as banks, mobile operators, transport companies and merchants involved, service complexity is a challenge in each NFC rollout.