Chipset vendor NXP has reported its fourth quarter and full-year 2011 results. The performance of the company, whose chipsets are widely used in NFC handsets, gives an indication of demand for the technology. “We believe the year ended with the industry achieving a 10 percent attach rate of NFC solutions to 445 million smartphones shipped in 2011 albeit below our original expectations of a 16 percent attach rate,” said company CEO Rick Clemmer (pictured). He added that NXP had now achieved over 130 unique handset and tablet design wins, up from 90 in the third quarter.

“We are cautiously optimistic that 2012 will see another significant step up in the mobile transactions business for NXP,” said Clemmer.  Revenues of the company’s identification chipset unit, which includes the NFC business, was US$155 million in the fourth quarter, a decline of three per cent sequentially but “substantially better” than original expectations, he said. Mobile transaction products (meaning NFC) improved by over 30 percent sequentially in the quarter. Clemmer hailed 2011 as “a breakout year” for the mobile transactions business as revenues grew 70 percent year-on-year.

NXP’s optimism appears to have returned after a hiccup earlier in the year when it admitted in its second quarter results to having been overly sunny in its predictions for NFC-based handset shipments. The company had originally predicted a range of 40 million to 100 million NFC handset shipments in 2011 but subsequently downgraded to the lower end of that range.

Overall the company, which supplies chipsets to a wide range of sectors including the automotive, saw Q4 2011 revenues decrease to US$857 from US$938 in the same period in 2010 (GAAP basis). Operating income was US$7 million compared to US$106 million the previous year (also GAAP basis).