500 Million People Worldwide to Use Mobiles as Travel Tickets by 2015: Juniper Research (News - Alert)

Around 500 million people worldwide will leverage their mobile devices as travel tickets on metros, subways and buses by 2015, according to a Juniper Research report.

This is over five times the number generated last year. The usage is expected to spread widely from the current concentration in markets such as Japan and several European countries. Outside Japan, systems in operation typically use SMS or bar codes.

Near Field Communications (NFC) will drive the growth of advanced mobile systems in coming years. While many enterprises leverage SMS ticketing in large cities in Scandinavia and Central and Eastern Europe such as Stockholm and Prague, the emerging NFC will add to market growth.

As metro authorities begin the transition to open, contactless payment systems, NFC ticket usage is expected to grow significantly beginning in 2013.

“Whether by expansion of SMS and bar code delivery or by NFC, at Juniper we see convenience and choice for users as key advantages of mobile ticketing. It will be 2013 before large numbers of NFC enabled devices are in peoples’ pockets and our new report forecasts the impact on transaction volumes,” said Howard Wilcox, “Mobile Ticketing for Transport Markets” report author, in a statement.

According to the Juniper Research report, mobile ticketing also has potential across train and air travel, the latter driven by mobile delivered bar coded boarding passes. Western Europe and China will be the main transport mobile ticketing regions by volume in 2015. Poor user experience is an implementation risk such as bar code reading issues.

Recently, Pyramid Research said NFC-enabled smartphones, which initially launched in 2010, will constitute 28 percent of total smartphone sales to end users (250 million units) by 2015. Mobile handsets that are NFC-capable will see skyrocketing sales in 2011 and 2012.