10% of Japanese consumers made a purchase with their mobile wallet in December

By Sarah Clark • nfcworld.com • 26 February 2011, 19:23

Analysis by Comscore for its 2010 Mobile Year in Review has found that just under 10% of Japanese mobile subscribers made a purchase with their mobile wallet during December 2010.

In all, 9.8 million mobile users made a purchase that month, with retail/convenience stores — where 7.6 million mobile subscribers made a mobile wallet purchase — topping the list of the most popular locations to buy with a mobile phone.

The next most popular categories, according to Comscore, were vending machines (3.2 million), public transportation (2.7 million), grocery stores (2.6 million) and restaurants (1.5 million).

Japan's Osaifu-Keitai mobile wallet service, which is based on embedding a non-NFC standard chip made by Sony Felica into mobile phones, was introduced by NTT Docomo and is offered by all of Japan's three leading mobile network operators.

Earlier this month, NTT Docomo revealed it would be switching to NFC standard technology in late 2012 in conjunction with Korean operator KT. Rival operators KDDI and Softbank aim to make the switch by the end of 2011, in partnership with Korean operator SK Telecom.