The increasing acceptance of mobile devices as e-commerce platforms – or mobile wallets – is gradually redefining the way that consumers purchase goods and services. One example is in the ticketing industry, where a growing number of consumers are now relying on smartphones or tablets to order, obtain and validate tickets for sporting events, concerts and even travel.

While the mobile ticketing industry is currently still in its infancy, the number of tickets delivered to mobile phones is expected to quadruple to 23 billion by 2016, up from the 4 billion sold worldwide in 2011, according to Juniper Research.

Report author David Snow sees mobile ticketing as a mainstay due to its ability to solve key problems for facility operators – who need extra staff, real estate and additional resources to print and distribute traditional paper-based tickets – and consumers, who can enjoy the immediacy of purchasing e-tickets from any location.

Snow stresses, however, that the success of mobile ticketing applications relies heavily on their usability and simplicity. If a user has a poor initial experience, he or she may shy away from purchases tickets from their mobile device for a significant period of time.

"Mobile ticketing together with mobile payments are the front running applications in the mobile commerce market today," he said. "Mobile ticketing may be the first mobile commerce application that will be adopted at a mass market level, so it’s important that users receive a first class experience; that is the major challenge for all players in the mobile ticketing ecosystem."

If the industry progresses as assumed, NFC mobile tickets will represent more than half of all mobile ticketing revenue by 2016, according to Juniper. As many as one in eight mobile users in Western Europe will leverage their handset as a contactless metro ticket within the next four years.