ABI Research forecasts 2.1 billion contactless credentials – a combination of smart cards and limited use RFID solutions – will ship into the transportation and ticketing market in 2018, just more than double that achieved in 2012.

In 2012, MiFare solutions accounted for more than 80% of all contactless ticketing credentials deployed. While ABI Research expects it to remain as the number one solution of choice, new standards coming to market, including CiPurse and a fast increasing “others” category are expected to reduce MiFare’s share to a forecasted 69% in 2018.

The market continues to evolve at a fast pace and further fragmentation is expected as government’s worldwide look at implementing national standards in a bid to guarantee interoperability, enabling cross-authority travel with single credentials. ITSO in the UK and VDV in Germany are just two examples, with China also mandating migration to a new localized standard.

ABI Research’s “Transportation Ticketing Technologies” Market Data includes coverage of both smart cards, secure ICs, and RFID, providing detailed shipment splits by region, product type (MiFare, Calypso, CiPurse, and other) with variants further broken-down into IC type (memory, microcontroller and limited use RFID).