750m people worldwide to use mobile ticketing by 2015
Juniper’s mobile ticketing report says the activity will grow from 4.5% of mobile phone users worldwide this year to 12.7% 2015, or 750 million users.
According to the report, published this month, “The key years will be 2011-2013 when we expect to see significant growth year-on-year, fueled by the availability of commercial mobile ticketing services and the early stages of NFC (near-field communication) commercialization in other countries than Japan.”
Mobile ticketing will be used to buy everyday tickets such as cinema, sporting events and travel, says Howard Wilcox, senior analyst at Juniper Research and author of the report. This is already the case in some countries, such as Japan, where mobile ticketing has been in place for some years.
The benefits of mobile ticketing are mostly associated around efficiency, versatility and security. As well as reducing the costs associated with paper-based distribution, mobile ticketing campaigns can be executed more quickly with cancellations and re-issues handled almost instantaneously.
SMS is the key technology for mass adoption of mobile ticketing, explained Wilcox.
“If mobile ticketing is going to achieve critical mass, SMS is essential due to its ubiquity. SMS is the common technology,” he said. “Convenience is the driving force from users’ perspective.”