According to Juniper Research’s latest study titled “Mobile Ticketing for Transport Markets: Airlines, Rail, Metro & Bus 2011-2015“, 500 million people all around the world will use their mobile devices as travel tickets on metros, subways and buses by 2015. This is more than five times the number generated last year when most such transactions were concentrated in Japan and several European countries.
Unsurprisingly, the research company predicts that NFC will drive the growth despite the fact that SMS ticketing is already in operation in several cities in Scandinavia and Central and Eastern Europe such as Stockholm and Prague. It is said that as metro authorities begin the transition to open contactless payment systems, NFC ticket usage will grow significantly beginning in 2013.
In addition to city public transportation, mobile ticketing also has potential across train and air travel, the latter driven by mobile delivered bar coded boarding passes.
Western Europe and the Far East & China will emerge as the leading transport mobile ticketing regions by volume in 2015.
Finally, Juniper warns that poor user experience may kill the deal, pointing to bar code reading issues as an example…