New research published by Juniper Research has estimated that over 2.6 billion mobile tickets will be delivered to just over 208 million mobile phone users by 2011. The report found clear evidence that the sector is gearing up for major launches over the next few years. Early trials, mainly led by mobile network operators, are now migrating into commercial services that are controlled by the ticketing issuers themselves.
Benefits for the ticketing issuers include reduced cost, better security to help the fight against fraud and improved environmental footprint by reducing paper. Early use of mobile barcode technology will be gradually complimented by the emergence of NFC (Near Field Communications), in particular for the transportation ticketing sector where there are already commercial deployments in the Far East and important trials in Western Europe and North America.
Most encouraging for the sector is the wide adoption by some of the major organisations that control the issuance of tickets, such as Ticketmaster, British Airways and Tickets.com. This is coupled with the involvement of the key operators and technology providers such as O2, NTT, DoCoMo, Vodafone, Nokia and Samsung.
Key findings from the report include:
The report summarised that 2007 had been an important and groundbreaking year for the sector with trials and commercial deployments expected to continue throughout 2008 and beyond.
Posted to the site on 5th March 2008
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/29726.php