By 2015, one in eight mobile users worldwide will either buy transport and entertainment tickets on their mobile or will have them delivered to their phones, according to research.
More than 750m users will avail of these services four years from now, a report released by Juniper Research has said.
Currently, delivering tickets to mobile phones for airline and railway transport, along with tickets for festivals and cinemas, are in the early stages of roll out in areas such as Japan, Scandinavia, and Central and Eastern Europe.
This year, only one in 20 purchase tickets from mobile phones, equating to 230m globally.
By 2013, the mobile delivery of tickets will become more mainstream, though growth constraints include the existing ticketing infrastructure and the danger of poor user experience with these services.
It will happen through SMS, bar codes, mobile web, smartphone apps and NFC.
“Mobile technology is moving the ticket machine into our pockets,” said Howard Wilcox, author of the Mobile Ticketing Report.
“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,” said Wilcox.
