Rick Clemmer, CEO of NXP, has provided details on the NFC phone market as a whole as well as NXP’s share of the NFC chip market during an earnings call with analysts to present the chip maker’s fourth quarter and full year 2011 results.

“Overall 2011 was a breakout year for our mobile transactions group as revenue grew over 70% year on year,” Clemmer told analysts during the presentation of the company’s results.

“We believe the year ended with the overall industry achieving about a 10% attach rate of NFC solutions to the 445m smartphones shipped in 2011, albeit below our original expectations of about a 16% attach rate,” he added. “We continue to experience strong customer adoption across the entire mobile transaction ecosystem.”

During a Q&A session following the presentation, Clemmer added that “We definitely think that 2012 will be a very solid year for NFC and be a proof point associated with it.”

Asked about the likely attach rate in 2012, Clemmer explained that “It’s gonna be higher, you know, it’s clearly going to grow significantly” and added that “we have encouraging signs and encouraging order levels from a number of different customers with over 130 different handsets and tablets that have designed in our NFC product. So we’re beginning to see expectations and plans associated with those ramps.”

Asked for further information about the 130 design wins, up 40 from the 90 design wins reported three months ago, and how successful NXP is in winning business, Clemmer explained that “there is probably six to eight that I’m aware of that we have not won… we feel very comfortable with our position.”

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