A new report from Juniper Research forecasts rapid adoption of NFC services over the next three years, with at least one in five smart phones worldwide having NFC contactless functionality.

Juniper predicts that almost 300 million NFC smart phones will be in use worldwide by 2014. North America is expected to account for half of these handsets in 2014, followed by Western Europe. According to Juniper, this growth will be driven in the short term by mobile network operators launching services – such as NFC payments and marketing via coupons and smart posters – in 20 early adopting countries before the end of 2012.

Juniper’s new report contains comprehensive six year forecasts for all the key market parameters including users, transactions and values for both NFC ticketing and retail payments. It also breaks down the opportunities for value added retail marketing services through coupons and smart posters, and tracks the status of 14 vendors addressing the market.

NFC Retail Marketing & Mobile Payments Report author Howard Wilcox comments: “Although there are still hurdles ahead, NFC prospects have been boosted by the succession of mobile operator and device vendor announcements. France is a case in point where operators expect to sell one million NFC devices this year.”