Use of mobile phones for tickets for all kinds of travel and entertainment will be one of the main drivers of growth of m-commerce into the near future.  

So says a study by Juniper Research, which forecasts that mobile ticketing transactions will exceed $100 billion (based on gross transaction value) as soon as 2012: this is more than double the current market. 

But the report establishes that rapid adoption of mobile devices for commerce-related applications is by no means limited to ticketing. All segments – money transfers, banking, payments and coupons – are forecast to see significant growth rates.

Report author Howard Wilcox explained: "Our report demonstrates the spectacular growth that we forecast across all the segments of mobile commerce. Four of these segments (ticketing, money transfers, physical goods and NFC) will more than double in transaction value over the next two years, while digital goods, banking and coupons will still post very healthy growth of 30 to 50 per cen over the two years."

The Juniper report stressed that commerce providers need to keep users top of mind when developing their applications. If the initial user experience is poor for mobile payment methods – either based on cost, security, reliability or ease of use – customers will reject them.

Further findings include:

• Mobile banking is becoming a must-have channel for banks
• The mobile coupons market will approach $6bn by 2014
• Mobile payments for physical goods will treble within three years as sites such as eBay Mobile and Amazon Mobile are used increasingly.