One in five smartphones will have near field communications technology by 2014, according to a new Juniper research report.
The “NFC Retail Marketing & Mobile Payments Report” says NFC services are set to proliferate rapidly over the next three years, forecasting almost 300 million NFC capable smartphones by 2014.
North America, says Juniper, will account for half of all NFC smartphones in 2014, followed by Western Europe.
The report says short term growth is being driven by mobile network operators launching services in 20 early adopting countries before the end of 2012.
“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,” writes report author Howard Wilcox.
With more and more handset vendors integrating NFC chipsets, Juniper believes NFC payments, mobile coupons and smart posters will become common amongst smartphone users in Western Europe, North America and other developed regions. Of course, mobile payments is not new to some countries in the developing world, either, with both Haiti and Kenya making headlines with their SMS mobile payment systems which can be used on regular feature phones without any NFC capabilities built in.
Despite the availability of SMS solutions, Google Inc., France Telecom Orange and Telefonica SA have all expressed significant interest in NFC technology as a way to expand on the possibilities of mobile commerce.
Of course, before the technology truly takes off, many believe firms will have to think seriously about the business model structures they plan to use. With banks, mobile operators, transport companies and retailers all wanting in on NFC, there’s little doubt the technology will see its fair share of service complexity issues too.
