Report: 500M to use mobile ticketing for transport by 2015
Juniper Research has released a new report predicting that the number of people worldwide using their mobile devices as travel tickets on metros, subways and buses will reach 500 million by 2015 – a fivefold increase over last year.
Concentrated mainly in Japan and in several European countries, mobile ticketing is expected to “spread widely” in other parts of the world, namely China and Western Europe. Outside Japan, systems in operation typically use SMS or bar codes, but Juniper Research sees great growth potential in NFC.
While SMS ticketing has been in operation for several years in large cities in Scandinavia and Central & Eastern Europe such as Stockholm and Prague, Juniper believes that recent momentum in NFC will be a driving factor in market growth. As metro authorities begin the transition to open contactless payment systems, Juniper forecasts NFC ticket usage to grow significantly beginning in 2013.
“Whether by expansion of SMS and bar code delivery or by NFC, we see convenience and choice for users as key advantages of mobile ticketing,” comments report author Howard Wilcox. “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.”
Mobile ticketing also has potential to expand across train and air travel, the latter driven by mobile delivered bar coded boarding passes, adds Wilcox.
Juniper’s new report, “Mobile Ticketing for Transport Markets: Airlines, Rail, Metro & Bus 2011-2015,” features five year forecasting for all the key market parameters, including users, transactions and values for airline, rail and metro/bus ticketing. The report also contains conclusions from Juniper’s analysis of 23 vendors, culminating in a new Transport Mobile Ticketing vendor strategy positioning matrix.