NFC smartphone chip shipments were predicted to hit 100 million in 2012. NXP Semiconductors has unveiled that the company has beat that number alone, shipping 125 million NFC chips last year. NXP also estimates its competitors shipped another 25 million chips, bringing the total to 150 million, much beyond the numbers predicted, the NFC Times reports.
This increase in NFC chip shipments is attributed in part by Samsung’s decision to include NFC technology in most of its devices.
“Those (smartphone) markets grew more quickly than we expected, subsequently the number of NFC devices were also up,” said John Devlin UK-based practice director for security and ID at U.S.-based ABI Research, speaking to the NFC Times. “NFC inclusion by a number of manufacturers, most notably Samsung, was above what we originally expected at the beginning of the year.”
According to the expert, the forecast for NFC-enabled phones and tablets for 2013 will probably be raised 250 million. This would represent a 25% growth rate, instead of the 15% previously predicted.
These numbers could growth further as NXP’s virtually unchallenged market grows. Competitors like Broadcom, Qualcomm and MediaTek are increasing their share. Broadcom has already begun shipping its NFC controller for two Nexus devices and has is also part of two recently announced Samsung phones. In January, the company’a CEO was confident that the company would “gain meaningful double-digit market share in NFC this year.”
“The confidence is coming from a fairly large number of customers that we’re working with, who have designed our products into their products, and we expect to ramp over the course of the year,” he added.
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There is no denying the mobile NFC trend is on in 2013. It remains to see whether or not this will translate into mobile contactless payments. If the Samsung/Visa partnership goes as planned, this could indeed be the year of mobile NFC payments.
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