New research from Berg Insight says global sales of NFC-equipped handsets increased ten-fold in 2011 to 30 million units. An increasing demand for Near Field Communication technology is expected to see this figure increase at a compound annual growth rate of 87.8% to reach 700 million units in 2016.
It’s part of a trend towards smartphone adoption worldwide, reports Berg Insight, which has resulted in GPS, Bluetooth and WLAN connectivity also becoming more popular.
38% of mobile devices shipped in 2011 had GPS, while 33% had WLAN (WiFi) connections.
André Malm, Senior Analyst at Berg Insight, said “Reliable indoor navigation systems for handsets need hybrid location technologies that fuse signal measurements from multiple satellite systems like GPS and GLONASS with cellular and WLAN network signals, together with data from sensors such as accelerometers, gyroscopes, compasses and altimeters.”
In December 2011, IMS Research calculated that 35 million NFC-equipped mobile phones had been shipped worldwide during the previous 12 months.
[Report brochure (pdf)]