Mobile Payments– another Growth Force for Smartphone
As the homogenization competition of smartphone becomes increasingly serious, but the smartphone shows great market outlook, product differentiation will play a growing important role in future smartphone competition, posing requirements for the function increase, where the feature of mobile payment will become an effective way out. It is projected
According to the survey released by market research firm IMS Research (now part of IHS Inc.), among 700 consumers from China, Japan, Poland, South Korea, Turkey, the U.K. and the U.S., 60 percent of respondents were either ‘very interested’ or ‘interested’ in a mobile phone that could replace their bank card, that is the function of mobile payments. This represents a positive outcome for stakeholders involved in the mobile payments space,” stated Don Tait, senior analyst at IMS Research.
As for the most positive countries who were interested in mobile phones replacing their bank cards, IMS said China, South Korea, Poland and Turkey are included. In 2011, there shipped around 35 million NFC-enabled handsets worldwide. The number of NFC-enabled phones launched onto the market has gathered pace during 2012. In addition Apple, virtually all of the leading smartphone manufacturers has introduced NFC-enabled handsets over the last 18 months, which bodes well for the technology and applications such as mobile payments. With ISIS finally launching its NFC payments and offers service in Austin, Texas and Salt Lake City, Utah last week and Google Wallet updating its offering to include peer-to-peer payment, momentum is certaly behind NFC.
Worth noting, payment cards are likely to be here for the foreseeable future. But the elimination of a payment and banking smart card as a form factor is still a long way off. But the development outlook is great. Indeed, IMS Research predicts that 3.4 billion smart payment cards will be shipped in 2017, from the 1.1 billion in 2011. Therefore, with the technology progress, mobile payments will be another growth force for smartphone in the near future.