A new report by Sweden-based Berg Insight may give supporters of NFC some encouragement. According to the report, global sales of handsets featuring the technology increased ten-fold in 2011 to 30 million units. The report predicted a compound annual growth rate of 87.8 percent for NFC devices meaning shipments will reach 700 million units worldwide in 2016.

Berg Insights said the technology, which is already available on high-end smartphones, will reach feature phones soon thanks to declining costs.

The NFC technology for short-range wireless point-to-point communication reached a breakthrough in 2011, the report said, when leading handset vendors released more than 40 NFC-enabled handsets.

"Even though it will take some time before the stakeholders agree on business models for payment networks, other use cases such as reading tags and easy pairing of devices may well be compelling enough for handset vendors to integrate NFC in mid- and high-end devices already today," said Berg Insight Senior Analyst André Malm.

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