A new report from Berg Insight shows that global sales of handsets equipped with Near Field Communication (NFC) technology grew by 300% last year to 140 million units. Annual device shipments are expected to reach 1 billion by 2017; a compound annual growth rate of 48.2%.
The company notes that almost 100 NFC-enabled devices were released by the top ten handset vendors last year.
André Malm, senior analyst at Berg Insight and the author of the report, said “It is the sum of many possible use cases for NFC rather than one single killer application that make the technology compelling for smartphone vendors already today. Once developers gain experience with NFC and get access to a larger installed base of compatible handsets, we can also expect to see entirely new use cases not yet imagined.”
[Report brochure (pdf)]