One in every eight mobile users worldwide will either have a ticket delivered to their mobile phone, or buy a ticket with their phone by 2015, with bar cinemas and coded boarding passes for airlines leading the way, claims a new study by Juniper Research.
If this comes to pass, then more than 750 million users worldwide will be using mobile ticketing. This compares with approximately 1 in 20 currently, or around 230 million users globally.
Ticket delivery will be by SMS, bar codes, mobile web, smartphone apps or NFC, however, the report does warn that this level of penetration could be at risk if user experience isn’t developed correctly at roll out and could be threatened further if the mobile ticketing redemption infrastructure doesn’t keep pace with user demand.
Whilst mobile ticketing users are currently concentrated in a number of early adopting transport schemes in Japan, Central & Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, the report suggests that opportunities for mobile ticketing will spread right across the transport, sport, entertainment and events sectors.
The Mobile Ticketing report pinpointed the next two years to 2013 as the key period in which mobile ticketing will transition from a minority experience to become mainstream as the mobile plays an ever growing role in all aspects of airline travel, rail travel, festivals and cinemas.
Report author Howard Wilcox pointed out: “Mobile technology is moving the ticket machine into our pockets. Our research demonstrated that mobile ticketing will change the way that many people buy and obtain their regular, every day tickets that are mostly printed at the moment. We foresee strong acceptance driven not only by airlines but also cinemas and some sports events: bar coded boarding passes are a clear case in point.”
