500m people worldwide will be using to use their mobiles as metro and bus tickets by 2015, according to the latest study from Juniper Research. This is over five times the number generated last year, but crucially, Juniper is expecting usage to spread widely from the current concentration in Japan and several European countries.

The report, Mobile Ticketing for Transport Markets, notes that while SMS ticketing has been in operation for several years in large cities in Scandinavia and Central & Eastern Europe such as Stockholm and Prague, recent momentum in Near Field Communications (NFC) will drive market growth. As metro authorities begin the transition to open contactless payment systems, NFC ticket usage is forecast to grow significantly beginning in 2013.

According to report author Howard Wilcox: “Whether by expansion of SMS and barcode delivery, or by NFC, at Juniper we see convenience and choice for users as key advantages of mobile ticketing. It will be 2013 before large numbers of NFC-enabled devices are in peoples’ pockets and our new report forecasts the impact on transaction volumes.”

Juniper’s report contains detailed five-year forecasts for key market parameters, including users, transactions and values for airline, rail and metro/bus ticketing. Additionally the report highlights the conclusions from Juniper’s analysis of 23 vendors addressing the market, which culminates in a new Transport Mobile Ticketing vendor strategy positioning matrix.

The report contains 273 figures and an additional 38 tables, and country data for 74 country markets. It concludes that Western Europe and the Far East & China will be the leading transport mobile ticketing regions by volume in 2015, but cautions that poor user experience, such as barcode reading issues, is an implementation risk.

There’s more information about the report here.