NFC integrated circuits shipments to reach 920 Million in 2015

IMS Research issued a survey focusing on the evolution of three promising markets, which are projected to experience strong growth in the coming years: NFC, secure payments and digital security. According to Senior Market Analyst, Don Tait, "2011 looks like being the year when NFC finally comes good and takes-off.

The NFC market has encountered many false dawns from its inception almost seven years ago. NFC credentials (mainly NFC-enabled handsets) are projected to increase dramatically in the next five years to reach 920 million shipments in 2015. The launch of a number of NFC-enabled smartphones in 2011 is helping the market to gain traction. Also, use of NFC-enabled phones for payment, mass transit & ticketing and access is also projected to boost market development over the next few years."

Tait continues "it has taken a number of years to resolve some of the major issues surrounding NFC. Some of the main issues included lack of available handsets, limited contactless terminals and infrastructure to support the technology and unclear business models and disagreements between different stakeholders of the ecosystem. Most of these issues are being resolved and have improved significantly over the last twelve months."

According to Don Tait, "NFC is not the only secure digital sector that is forecast to experience good growth in the next few years. Payment and banking cards are also projected to show good growth over the next five years. Payment and banking smart card shipments are projected to be 2.65 billion in 2015. Smart card shipments in the payment and banking sector are to be considerably boosted by People's Bank of China's decision to convert all payment cards into smart cards by 2015. The payment and banking sector is forecast to be driven by the migration towards EMV and contactless deployments."

Tait continues "digital security solutions (including conditional access, government & healthcare ID, physical access control and M2M) are projected to increase from around 600 million units in 2010 to over 1.2 billion units in 2014. National ID is estimated to be by far the largest potential application within the government & healthcare ID sector. Asia is the largest contributor to this, accounting for over half the national ID cards in circulation."

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This article originally appeared on EE Times Europe.