The mobile ticketing market is set to explode over the next few years. New figures from Juniper Research forecast that more than 208 million mobile users will purchase some 2.6 billion tickets via a mobile device by 2011, according to an article on Cellular-news.com.

Delivering tickets to mobile phones can result in lower costs, increased security and a more environmentally friendly approach to ticketing, Juniper found. The market researcher estimates that the airline industry alone could save upwards of $500 million per year if it shifted to mobile boarding passes.

British Airways, Ticketmaster and Tickets.com are some of the organizations testing the mobile ticketing waters, the article says. Carriers and technology providers putting their weight behind the movement include O2, NTT DoCoMo, Vodafone, Nokia and Samsung.