The latest technology to come to mobile devices albeit being around for quite some time is of course Near Field Communication (NFC) and apparently sales of NFC enabled devices are expected to rise from 2013 onwards according to a recent report from Informa Telecoms.

Apparently total NFC handset shipments are expected to rise from 44 million to 630 million by 2015 and represents 40 percent of all new smartphones which is up from the 3.5 percent at the moment with the Android platform accounting for the largest number of NFC enabled devices in from 2012.

Informa Telecoms & Media senior analyst Guillermo Escofet says, “We expect a modest growth of the mobile NFC market for the next two years but this will change as many of the leading players introduce NFC-enabled handsets, spurred to enter the market by fear of Apple’s and Google’s ambitions in the sector. Google has already played its hand, overshadowing moves by carriers in its home territory, the US. Apple is still waiting in the wings, leaving everyone guessing.”

While another of the firms senior analysts, Shailendra Pandey said, “We anticipate that Android will account for the largest number of NFC handset shipments from 2012 onwards and over 75% of NFC handsets are anticipated to be smartphones by 2015.”

Growth will be driven by various user cases like coupons, loyalty cards, access controls, tagging, sharing, local payments, ticketing and information, while the availability of NFC smartphone will depend on the speed of deployment of NFC.

Pandey further states, “The total value of the transactions from mobile NFC payments is expected to grow from around US$2.4 billion in 2011 to over US$71 billion by 2015. Currently over 90% is generated in Asia Pacific (mostly Japan and South Korea) but this share will drop to around 40% by 2015 as Western Europe and North America start to see strong adoption of mobile NFC services.”

Thus it would appear that Android will take the lead when it comes to offering the public NFC enabled smartphone, although personally I’m still not convinced on the whole matter of NFC payments and much prefer to do it the old fashioned way.

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