A new report from Juniper Research has calculated that nearly 15 billion tickets will be delivered to mobile phones worldwide by 2014. Only 2 billion are expected this year.
The fastest-growing sector for m-tickets is transport, with companies offering a combination of SMS, barcode and app-driven services. Western Europe will be the leading region in 2014 based on the total number of mobile tickets delivered, taking over from the Far East & China region.
Howard Wilcox, the Juniper Research analyst who wrote the report, said "Although 15 billion sounds large, it is in fact it a small percentage of total tickets issued – there is plenty of scope for innovative solutions to penetrate this market. Next steps will see more widespread purchasing on mobiles, as well as use of NFC tickets. Currently however there are only limited examples of NFC ticketing usage outside of the Far East owing to the lack of device availability."