The latest market forecast by Juniper research indicates that NFC capable smartphones are likely to increase rapidly and touch almost 300 million by 2014. Rapid adoption of NFC services will determine growth in the short term which will be driven primarily by mobile network operators launching services in 20 early adopting countries.

Juniper provides research and analytical services to the global hi-tech communications sector, providing consultancy, analyst reports, forecasts and industry commentary. Report author Howard Wilcox focused on NFC Retail Marketing & Mobile Payments, discussing the key drivers that are triggering the NFC market and the hurdles that lie ahead for it.

As handset vendors resort to integration of NFC chipsets, NFC payments and retail marketing capability via coupons and smart posters will become more popular in Western Europe, North America and other developed regions.

By 2014, North America is expected to account for half of all NFC smartphones with Western Europe following closely behind. With major players such as Google (News - Alert), Telefonica, Orange Telecom eying mobile commerce as a potential revenue opportunity, it would appear that the landscape is bright for NFC.

However, Juniper Research warns that it could be some time before NFC services become fully mainstream. This is because business model structures need to develop further. With entities like banks, mobile operators, transport companies and merchants involved, service complexity is a challenge that has to be dealt with adequately.

In spite of a few bottlenecks, report author Howard Wilcox appeared to have no qualms over the prospects for NFC. He said, "Although there are still hurdles ahead, NFC prospects have been boosted by the succession of mobile operator and device vendor announcements. France is a case in point where operators expect to sell one million NFC devices this year."

Juniper's new report contains comprehensive six year forecasts for all the key market parameters including users, transactions and values for both NFC ticketing and retail payments.

In another news story, Juniper Research (News - Alert) reported that with the growing impact that mobile technology and especially smartphones were having on the airline industry, mobile boarding passes increased to 480 million mobile boarding passes, which is treble the 160 million for 2010.