Report: 700M NFC mobile customers by 2013

A new forecast of the near-field communications market predicts 700 million mobile subscribers worldwide will have phones with NFC contactless technology by 2013.
The report, from Juniper Research, said there is a significant opportunity for NFC mobile payment services, chips, phones and supporting services as the market reaches a tipping point between 2011 and 2013.
“NFC is an exciting and versatile technology that has great potential to make many everyday tasks such as buying small value items as well as tickets much easier,” said Howard Wilcox, the report’s author. “In the future, users will also be able to discover new services by holding their NFC phones next to smart posters and advertisements. The Oyster card in London and the recent O2 Wallet trial results confirm the promise of NFC.”
Juniper notes the market currently is dominated by FeliCa-enabled phones on the networks of NTT DoCoMo Inc., KDDI Corp. and SoftBank in Japan. North America, Western Europe and the Far East and China are expected to be the leading regions for NFC by 2013.
The firm warns, however, that two factors will determine how well the market does during the next several years, including the availability of NFC phones and the speed of installation of NFC readers by merchants.